Business booming for China’s private eyes
Print Edition
YANG Rui did not hear from his son Yang Jiemin for six months after he graduated from college.
Desperate to find Jiemin, the father turned to Li Yuan, who runs a private investigation firm in Changchun, capital of northeast China’s Jilin Province.
Li tracked Jiemin down based on a phone number he once used to call Yang to ask for money.
Jiemin was being held against his will by a gang plotting pyramid schemes.
After he determined the son’s precise location with the help of a delivery man, Li reported the matter to the police who moved in to “rescue” Jiemin and detain the alleged criminals.
Most of Li’s clients are people seeking lost parents or runaway children. Others have asked him to track a spouse accused of cheating.
The cases seldom meet the minimum criteria for police to launch an investigation.
As a result the number of private investigators, or detectives as some like to be called, has been growing.
According to Chen Tianben from the People’s Public Security University of China, there are now more than 100,000 private eyes working for almost 23,000 different firms.
Many are former professionals from the judiciary, legal service or police, he said.
Li’s agency charged Yang 30,000 yuan (US$4,800) to find his son.
The father paid a retainer of 5,000 yuan and the rest when the case was closed. If the agency had failed to find Jiemin, Li said the company would have charged 7,000 yuan.
Many private eyes ask their clients to deposit between 50 and 60 percent of the estimated fee in advance. Others ask for payment when they make a major breakthrough.
Private investigators first emerged in China in the early 1990s in Beijing and Shanghai, and were usually retained to assist civil, and occasionally criminal, investigations.
Some firms recovered debts through threats and extortion, forcing police into a difficult position. Many of the methods they use are not legal and may constitute criminal offenses. Some of the business they engage in also falls into a gray area in law. In 1993, private investigative agencies were outlawed.
A lack of official recognition and clear legal guidance means law-abiding investigators are often tarred with the same brush as those engaged in illegal undertakings, Chen said.
They are not bound by a code of conduct, so professionalism and legal compliance are often patchy, he said.
“Some so-called investigators have violated citizens’ rights to privacy, and many justify their actions as due diligence,” said an unnamed police officer.
Top firms are strict in compliance with local laws, and their investigators can track people only in public places and are allowed to collect information only from public sources.
Due diligence investigations and probes into corruption are among the services requested by multinational corporations operating in China. But it appears to be the Chinese government itself, through its fight against corruption, that has inflamed foreign business concerns.
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