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Inside the secret world of the corporate spies who infiltrate protests

12-12-2017 < Blacklisted News 50 317 words
 

“An amalgamation of members of the samba bands Rhythms of Resistance and Barking Samba played during the procession … Passersby were amused by the costumes and theatre and engaged as the group passed them.”


The alert is one of hundreds of pages of leaked documents from two corporate security firms that have been seen by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.


They shine a rare light on a habitually secretive industry in which large firms hire covert operatives to monitor and infiltrate political groups that object to their commercial activities. At a premium is advance information, tipping off the firms about protests that are being organised against them.


The leaked C2i documents, ranging from boardroom minutes to humdrum matters such as holiday entitlements for staff, reveal four firms that hired the corporate security firm – British Airways, Royal Bank of Scotland, Caterpillar and Porsche.


The second set of leaks relate to a Kent-based corporate security firm, the Inkerman Group, which employed former Met commissioner Lord Imbert as a strategic adviser in the past.


Caterpillar, the manufacturing firm, had also hired Inkerman. An email by a Caterpillar manager states that in 2005 “Caterpillar have been working very closely with the Inkerman Group, this partnership has been very successful in providing Caterpillar a pro-active approach to activism directed against Caterpillar facilities in the UK”.


Energy firm RWE npower said it had used Inkerman “to provide us with intelligence on potential threats or issues in the form of weekly reports and ad hoc updates”. This arrangement had been terminated in 2009.


RWE Generation UK, which now runs the power stations for the firm, said it only uses “publicly available and openly-sourced information to inform us of potential issues” and only hires private security firms to guard its sites, not to gather information on political groups.


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