The History of KYC News Inc. and the firm's principal, David Marchant.

KYC News Inc., formerly called Offshore Business News & Research Inc., was established as a Florida corporation in November, 1996. Initially, the company focused on offshore financial centers but later started concentrating on financial crime wherever it was committed. hence our name change in March, 2003.

The term 'KYC' stands for 'Know Your Customer' and has become a synonym for Due Diligence in the financial industry.

The Company publishes investigative information in its newsletters, OffshoreAlert, InsideBermuda and KYC Alert, and daily news feeds and owns several proprietary due diligence databases, including those containing details of most civil lawsuits filed at Bermuda Supreme Court since January, 1986, and the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands since January, 1987. Our products and services are designed to assist investors and companies with financial due diligence to help them reduce their exposure to white-collar crime.

The Company was founded and is operated by British journalist David Marchant, who is based in Miami, Florida, U.S.A. Marchant is regularly interviewed or quoted by the world's media, including the The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Miami Herald, Dallas Morning News, Vancouver Sun, Offshore Finance U.S.A., Independent on Sunday, of London; CBS News, BBC Radio, Bloomberg Television, United Press International and many more.

The Company was also referenced several times in the U.S. Senate Report on 'Correspondent Banking: A Gateway to Money Laundering' that was published on February 5, 2001.

Marchant has been a journalist since 1984 when he trained under a program operated by the National Council for the Training of Journalists in the UK, obtaining the NCTJ Proficiency Certificate, which is the industry standard qualification for journalists. In his career, he has written for publications in England, Wales, Bermuda and the United States, including the Gwent Gazette, Bournemouth Evening Echo, Western Daily Press and Lloyd's List/Insurance Day newspapers in Britain, The Royal Gazette and Bermuda Sun newspapers in Bermuda and National Underwriter insurance magazine in the United States.

He began covering offshore finance while working in Bermuda from 1990-96, a country that he was forced to leave after being denied a work permit for writing investigative articles that upset the local establishment. Apart from turning down an application for a work permit and appeals, then Finance Minister Grant Gibbons turned down an application to incorporate the Company in Bermuda as an exempted company after the Bermuda Monetary Authority had recommended approval.

In 1993, Marchant’s stories of how regulators allowed some of Bermuda’s most influential businessmen to strip Bermuda Fire & Marine Insurance Company of over $40 million of assets before it went bust with a net insolvency of over $1.4 billion were quoted extensively in a US Congressional report into the insurance industry. A civil lawsuit was later brought against the perpetrators, who settled for $55 million but not before they unsuccessfully tried to have Marchant imprisoned for contempt of court during their trial in 1999 after he refused to disclose his sources for various articles he had written about the firm.

While in Bermuda, Marchant also exposed the dubious business practices of Boston-based businessmen Gilbert Beinhocker and Gregory Plunkett, whose failed investment schemes had cost investors tens of millions of dollars over many years. Their worldwide assets were frozen by a US court as a direct result of Marchant’s articles. Beinhocker and Plunkett sued for libel in Massachusetts but the action was dismissed.

In October, 1997, an investigation by the Company directly led to the shares of hi-tech firm NimsTec Limited being de-listed from the Bermuda Stock Exchange for publishing misleading and inaccurate statements in its share prospectus. In the same month, McKeeva Bush was forced to resign as a Cayman Islands government minister, largely as a result of the Company exposing his role in the fraudulently-run First Cayman Bank.

In the summer of 1997, the Company was the first media organization to reveal an attempt by the UK government to force its offshore financial centers to start complying with fiscal investigations by foreign regulators. The Cayman and UK governments accused us of lying at the time, only for the entire article to be proven true over the course of time.

In March 1998, the Company revealed allegations of insolvency, theft of client funds, money laundering and other improprieties against Marc M. Harris and his Panama-based offshore financial services group The Harris Organization. The Harris Organization sued for libel and lost following a trial at Federal Court in Miami, Florida, then appealed the decision and lost that too. In November, 2003, Harris was convicted of multiple counts of money laundering and tax evasion at federal court in Florida and sentenced to 17 years in prison in May, 2004.

In January, 1999, the Company exposed the First International Bank of Grenada and was sued for libel again at Federal Court in Miami. Once again, the Company prevailed and, in the summer of 2000, FIBG collapsed with more an estimated net insolvency of US$473 million, approximately $206 million of which was clients' principal.

Starting in November, 1999, the Company exposed the dubious practices of the Imperial Consolidated Group and its principals, Lincoln Julian Fraser and Jared Bentley Brook. Following our articles, they resigned from the Company and were disqualified from serving as company directors by the Department of Trade and Industry in the United Kingdom.

Imperial Consolidated also sued the Company for libel and sought an injunction to prevent us from further exposing its activities and failed in both actions. In April, 2002 - 17 months after OffshoreAlert first exposed the group, Imperial's offshore bank, Imperium Bank, was taken over by regulators in Grenada and, in June, 2002, the group's UK-based companies went into administration. The group has liabilities of GBP220 million (US$336 million) and unknown assets, according to its administrator. It is being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office, in the U.K.

While OffshoreAlert was exposing Imperial Consolidated, several banks closed down the group's bank accounts for fear of becoming involved in criminal activity. One bank that continued to provide services to Imperial Consolidated up to the end, however, was Rabobank Nederland, one of the biggest banks in the world, whose due diligence procedures apparently did not extend to carrying out a free Internet search.

KYC News exists not only to protect the public from the criminal activities of groups such as Imperial Consolidated but also to expose their business partners.

The results of new investigations are published each month in our two newsletters.