Where Online Intelligence Meets the Ground
What our workshops taught us about asset tracing in Asia
Futurum works closely with law firms across Asia Pacific and the UK, and training has always been part of how we do that. Over the past few months, James Ellender ran several CPD sessions with firms across the region, and honestly, what came out of them was not what any of us expected.
Not because the material was new. Because of what lawyers kept asking.
Again and again, the same thing surfaced. Firms that had done the research, run the searches, filed the reports, and still couldn’t answer the one question their client needed answered. Where are the assets? The problem wasn’t the work. It was the assumption underneath it, that thorough research and real intelligence are the same thing. They are not.
“Part of what the sessions are designed to do is address that gap practically. Educating dispute team lawyers on what is actually feasible and discoverable, and where the limitations on visibility genuinely sit, helps manage expectations and sharpen strategy when it comes to asset searching. Each jurisdiction carries its own nuances in how you find assets, whether that’s property and land ownership, private shareholdings, vehicles or other interests, and understanding those nuances before a matter escalates is what separates preparation from scrambling.” – James Ellender, CEO, Futurum Risk
Information is not intelligence
There is a version of asset tracing that looks right on paper. Registry searches, corporate filings, a social media sweep, sanctions checks. All done. All documented. And at the end of it, the same question you started with.
The research isn’t the problem. Mistaking it for intelligence is.
“The most important lesson in any investigation is understanding the difference between information and intelligence. I spent thirty years in the Metropolitan Police watching cases succeed and fail, and the difference was often that gathered information wasn’t analysed and developed into intelligence. If this process isn’t understood, proactively actioned, and then used effectively, decision-making and ultimately outcomes are affected. People in the investigation arena need to fully understand this and have the ability to recognise the difference it can make.” – Joanne Given, Head of Intelligence, Futurum Risk
Joanne spent thirty years with the Metropolitan Police, much of it leading intelligence teams at scale. The difference she’s describing isn’t a technicality. It’s the difference between a report that describes a situation and one that actually explains it. What the sessions kept showing us was how often firms have the former and think they have the latter.
Raw data, no matter how comprehensively gathered, is only as useful as the analytical framework applied to it. Without the experience to know what a pattern means, what an absence of information suggests, or when a corporate structure looks normal but isn’t, you are reading words without understanding the language.
The trail always ends somewhere
Every investigation starts online, and it should. Records, registries, filings, ownership structures, social media- it’s all available to anyone with the right tools. The question isn’t how to find it. It’s what you do when it runs out. And it always runs out.
A subject can hold real estate through a nominee that passes every automated check. They can have interests in companies that look dormant on paper. They can have moved assets somewhere the digital trail simply doesn’t follow. What closes that gap isn’t more data. It’s a trained eye, relationships built over years, and a real understanding of how a specific market actually works, not how it looks from the outside.
The sessions were built around exactly this. Participants worked through a full asset tracing investigation from initial research through to the point where fieldwork and human intelligence become essential. What that looks like in practice:
- Reading the behavioural signals in someone’s digital footprint- what they follow, engage with, and search for can indicate undisclosed assets or relocation plans long before any formal disclosure is made
- Understanding what registry data genuinely can and cannot tell you, and how beneficial ownership is obscured across common offshore structures
- Knowing when and how to bring in human sources, and the legal framework for doing so across different jurisdictions
- Building evidence that holds up rather than intelligence that just points in a direction
- Understanding what’s actually recoverable across borders before the legal strategy is set
What works in Hong Kong doesn’t work in Jakarta
The theme that generated the most discussion across all the sessions was jurisdiction. More specifically, the assumption that a methodology that works in one market transfers cleanly to another.
It doesn’t. And in Asia, getting that wrong has real consequences.
“A map of London won’t help you navigate Jakarta. Applying the same broad-stroke analysis across every jurisdiction will leave you flying blind. Local contextual knowledge isn’t optional; it’s a must when translating findings into actionable intelligence.” – Ghina Abdul, Senior Associate, APAC, Futurum Risk
Ghina works across Southeast Asia from Singapore, with a particular focus on Malaysia and Indonesia. The example she uses in practice illustrates the point precisely. In most Western jurisdictions, a politically exposed person sitting close to a corporate entity is an immediate red flag. In Indonesia, where oligarchy has been woven into the fabric of the democracy since the 1998 Reformasi, that proximity is often unremarkable. The question isn’t whether the exposure exists. It’s whether there’s any actual unfair advantage involved. A researcher applying a Western risk framework to an Indonesian fact pattern will either over-flag everything or, worse, miss what’s actually there.
The same dynamic plays out across Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia and the wider region. Each market carries its own assumptions about ownership, control and disclosure. Understanding those assumptions isn’t background reading. It’s the investigation itself.
That’s why across Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, having local, on-the-ground resources who support intelligence and evidence gathering is not a luxury. It’s a structural necessity. First-hand information, gathered with accuracy and credibility in the right market, changes what a case can achieve. The alternative is working from a distance and hoping the translation holds.
Getting there before the window closes
Coordinating investigations across multiple regions is as much a logistics challenge as an analytical one. Who is in position before an instruction arrives matters more than who can be mobilised once it does.
“Running investigations across multiple regions means you quickly learn that speed and local knowledge aren’t separate things; they’re the same thing. The teams that move quickly are the ones who already understand the ground before the instruction arrives.” – Amber Jayde Martens, Global Project Manager, Futurum Risk
By the time an instruction lands, the window for certain actions has often already started closing. Preservation, freezing, source development- these things don’t wait for a retainer to be signed. The firms that consistently get results in this space aren’t necessarily the biggest or the best resourced. They’re the ones who built their networks before they needed them.
Speed in this context is not about rushing. It’s about already being ready. The difference between a team that can act on day one and a team that spends day one getting up to speed is often the difference between an asset that can be traced and one that has already moved.
The question that came up every time
Across all the sessions, the question that kept surfacing wasn’t about technique. It was about timing. When should we have started this? How early is early enough?
Earlier than you think. The intelligence built before a dispute is filed, the asset picture established before a counterparty knows they’re being looked at, is almost always more complete and more actionable than anything gathered once proceedings have begun. That’s what a pre-litigation approach is designed to capture. And quietly, that’s what every session was really about.
“Evidential gathering and asset discovery through correct investigative techniques provides a line in the sand. Our work helps substantiate and provide critical information for future freezing orders and Mareva injunctions.” – James Ellender, Co-Founder and CEO, Futurum Risk
That line in the sand matters. It creates a fixed, documented point in time, a record of what existed and where, before the other side had any reason to move anything. Without it, you are building a case on a moving picture. With it, you are building on evidence.
If you’d like to talk through a CPD session for your team, or discuss how any of this applies to something you’re currently working on, get in touch.
