Spying a gap in the market for spies

Surveillance firm IBI Investigators is looking for new operatives

Ireland's premier corporate spooks agency is looking for new operatives. IBI Investigators, which specialises in corporate surveillance work and sweeps Irish boardrooms for bugging devices (yes, really), has just taken on another six staff in Dublin, bringing its total to 30. The company is now in the market for about another 12 operatives. So dust off that spy manual and get your CV in, quick.

Headquartered here but with offices in London and Liverpool, it was founded just over two years ago by Martin Buckley, the former marketing manager of Harrods department store in London. I sat down for a coffee with him during the week.

Okay, so Buckley isn’t a spook. He is quite normal, actually, and didn’t talk into his sleeve once. He says a gap in the market here revealed itself during the bust, as Irish firms kept travelling to London to hire corporate spy agencies as the number of disputes rose.

The company’s Irish clients include banks, global insurance companies, law firms, local authorities and, rather intriguingly, some “high net worth individuals”. I wonder who they are.

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Buckley, as you’d expect, maintained a code of omerta as to his clients’ identities.

He says about 80 per cent of the company’s work involves covert surveillance. It is also involved in gathering evidence for law firms, monitoring the activities of employees suspected of theft, and ensuring high-profile companies are not being monitored by their rivals – hence the bug-sweeping of boardrooms.

The sector is unlicensed, and Buckley says IBI has been contacted by the security industry regulator, the Private Security Authority, which is conducting an assessment of the industry.

It has been a lucrative venture for the former Harrods man so far. The business will pull in fees of about €1.2 million this year.

Buckley scotched the notion that his job is like something from a Dick Tracy movie. “We don’t break the law. There are no secrets, no tricks, and we don’t keep our clients in the dark about anything.”

Bah, just as I was fishing out that mac.