How to Conduct
an International
Internal Investigation
Fueled by ingenuity.
Inspired by you.
Author:
Donald C. Dowling, Jr.
COPYRIGHT ©2019 L ITTLER MENDELSON, P.C. 1
HOW TO CONDUCT AN INTERNATIONAL INTERNAL INVESTIGATION
Imagine an anonymous worker at a multinational’s Egypt factory contacts the global whistleblower hotline and accuses the
Cairo plant manager of dumping chemicals into the Nile. Or imagine the manager of a bank’s Mexico City branch reports that
her secretary’s family seems to be trading on inside information. Or imagine an employee of a multinational’s Marseilles oce
complains that one of her co-workers keeps groping her. Or imagine the U.S. Justice Department contacts a multinational’s
Milwaukee headquarters to ask about some lavish dinners the Middle East sales team hosted for ocials in Saudi Arabia.
Any of these incidents, if it actually occurred, would be serious and could be criminal. Obviously a multinational receiving
unproven allegations like these needs to find out what really happened. This means launching an internal investigation.
Multinationals—particularly those headquartered in the United States—fully appreciate this. They know not to ignore or
suppress information about possible wrongdoing. They recognize the value of conducting a thorough inquiry to find out
whether what someone claims happened did or did not happen.
Additionally, outside of the United States employment-at-will regime, a thorough internal investigation can be vital because
labor judges hold local employers to high burdens of proof. Overseas, an employer that disciplines or fires someone for
committing a bad act will need to be able to prove it. An internal investigation can get the employer the proof.
In the last couple of decades, the state of the art for how companies conduct their internal investigations has evolved
considerably, particularly in the United States. At multinational organizations, internal investigations often cross national
borders, and so investigatory practices become a cross-border matter. A U.S.-headquartered multinational looking into
suspected wrongdoing in overseas operations tends to want to export its sophisticated made-in-America toolkit of internal
investigatory best practices. U.S. management and the U.S. board of directors may insist that a cross-border investigation
be thorough enough to satisfy their tough American standards. They will resist backing o, rolling back, watering down or
loosening up their good investigatory practices even in the face of an overseas local who protests “…but you don’t
understand—that’s not how we do things around here.”
But conducting an overseas investigation in the U.S. style can trigger possible legal challenges. And of course, an international
investigation has to stay strictly legal—investigators inquiring into possible criminal misconduct cannot aord to be caught
breaking the law themselves. In addition to legal compliance, internal investigations should not disrupt an organization’s own
internal operations, and should avoid causing ancillary cultural (and human resources) problems.
Our discussion here addresses a multinational seeking a way to resolve this conflict, a way to project-manage a cross-border
internal investigation to meet headquarters’ high standards while also complying with applicable laws and accounting for
overseas expectations hostile to American-style investigatory practices. We first set context by analyzing four threshold
strategic considerations when conducting an international internal investigation. Then we address process, detailing four
stages and thirty steps for how to conduct an eective and compliant cross-border investigation.
Context : Threshold strategic considerations in an international
internal investigation
Before embarking on the specific steps and stages of a given cross-border internal investigation, account for threshold
strategic considerations in play. Specifically, think about: (A) the cross-border character of the investigation; (B) the size and
scope of the investigation; (C) exporting headquarters’ investigatory practices; and (D) the disparate categories of law aecting
international investigations.
A. Cross-border character of the investigation. Most internal investigations are local domestic, with the accuser,
the target, the witnesses, the investigators and the alleged incidents all in the same country, and the investigation
