[1][2][3] The investigators specialised in illegally obtaining private data from banks, utility companies and HM Revenue and Customs.
[6] Graham Freeman, a hacker who was jailed as a result of SOCA's Operation Millipede said that 80 per cent of his clients were blue-chip companies and high-profile individuals, with the rest connected to the media.
[4] Members of Parliament on the Home Affairs Select Committee, under chairman Keith Vaz, are examining claims that the companies used private investigators to engage in industrial espionage.
A fellow committee member, James Clappison, wrote to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Bernard Hogan-Howe, to ask him for names of the companies and individuals who had hired corrupt private investigators.
Barbatus had found that private investigators were hacking computers and corrupting police officers, two detectives had been jailed after they tried to access the New York Stock Exchange unlawfully.
[7] Vaz later wrote to the heads of various British regulatory bodies to ask for clarification over their guidelines on the usage of private investigators.
[1] The director general of SOCA, Trevor Pearce, and Metropolitan Police Commander Neil Basu issued a joint statement to the Home Affairs Select Committee on 12 July 2013 that claimed SOCA had provided the Metropolitan police with “full access” to computers seized years earlier from the corrupt private investigators.
[5] The chairman of SOCA, Ian Andrews, resigned in August 2013, following his failure to declare his ownership of Abis Partnership Ltd, a management consultancy company that he owned with his wife, Moira.
[3] Hurst's computer had been unlawfully accessed by corrupt private investigators and he emailed Andrews to tell him that he was “frankly astonished” at his evidence.