Employment & Security Background Investigations
Background Investigations in 3rd World Countries, to include Philippines Background Investigations, are more labor and time intensive than they are in the Western World for a number of reasons. First, distance is not measured in miles or kilometers, but increments of time, as traffic can be horrendous in the 3rd World.
Within the government agencies to be checked, the 3rd World private investigator usually faces a lower level of professionalism, a higher level of bureaucracy, apathy and occasionally, corruption issues to circumvent, in accessing what often times is supposed to be open source, government agencies.
Add to this, many 3rd World government agency records, such as criminal records, are not generally as thorough or accurate as they would be in the Western World. For instance, Subject’s name may be on file within a national, government criminal records data base, often times lacking a middle name or initial, or even a birthdate. So then the Philippines private investigator has to review all the background information the U.S. based investigator has provided them, in an attempt to discard those names on file that are too young or too old to be the person of interest, and try to further define potentials by the area where the crime occurred, compared to Subject’s former area of birth or residence.
And whether the international investigator gets a “hit” on a criminal record, could depend upon whether a Subject has expunged his record from the electronic files of the agency being searched. Some Third World countries do have such internal information on file electronically; but the hard copy may be closely guarded or secured. So someone wanting to expunge his criminal record from the indices would do so in almost all cases in the electronic file which is much easier to alter through bribery. In several countries within Southeast Asia for instance, upwards of at least 1% of records may have been expunged by those with prior criminal records. You might say, well, that’s only 1%? Well, its 1% of millions. That could easily be over a quarter of a million falsified records in some countries!
And with regards to education checks, there are geographical areas within the major cities of some 3rd World countries where one can not only purchase a fraudulent diploma from a prestigious local university, they can also have transcripts prepared in a tailor made fashion as the buyer prefers.
There are some specialist investigative companies that do all their business electronically, in support of more standard investigative companies. For instance, one may be able to attempt to conduct a lower level “electronic” Philippine background check for under $250 from a Western World based “electronic” investigative background company. But it is doubtful that such Western based “electronic” background check companies have conducted any significant degree of due diligence on those overseas independent “freelance” investigators that support them from within the 3rd World. And since they are paying them minimal for their efforts, often times the freelance investigator may be “ghost writing” negative results, never having conducted the required checks in the first place. So, what are you really getting for that “electronic” investigation into the 3rd World? At a minimum, you could get a potential professional “black eye”, or possibly worse, a civil suit against your firm for failure to perform “duty of care”!