Where executives are undercover agents too

Security consultants are increasing recruiting undercover agents in multinationals and corporates to weather threats of union activities, espionage and frauds in organisations.

These agents, besides fitting the bill of the corporate profiles they had been recruited for, also double up as eyes and ears for the top brass to spy on their colleagues in office.

Companies into software development and automobiles, besides multinationals companies, in general, appear to prefer such risk management/ under cover operations.

MNCs which establish large units in India always prefer such undercover agents in office, said Mr B. R. Lohia, Chairman, Eagle Hunter Solutions.

Eagle Hunter, which has over 630 clients, is ‘handlers' of over 700 such moles across the Industry.

For FY 10, revenues were Rs 118 crore and net profit Rs 7.3 crore.

In addition to the salaries they draw from the company, they are paid a fixed sum by the security agencies for the classified information passed on.

Planted in key positions, they report to the security agencies which recruited them every month.

The security agencies also give these agents an orientation programme on the basics of undercover operations.

The organisational hierarchy of the moles vary. In MNCs, it could be as high as a General Manager, who generally gets over Rs one lakh a month for the information transmission. For a lower level shop-floor supervisor the payment would be about Rs 10,000.

MNCs invariably look for people in the higher echelons as they may want to keep a tab on the Chief Executive Officer, who invariably is a local appointee, he said.

Needless to say, background checks of the moles are made ahead of such appointments by security agencies themselves.

Asked if family-run large corporates houses sought such services, he said while initially it was mainly the MNCs, the GenNext in the family-run businesses have a distinct preference for the service. However, they were careful to exclude their existing companies, as it would be prove detrimental to employee morale if the strategy was exposed. The obvious preference was for new ventures, as the entire team was new.

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