Sandstone is a strategic intelligence firm providing compliance and integrity investigation, risk advisory assessment, enhanced due diligence, information security advice and litigation support.
Sandstone is a strategic intelligence provider whose mission is to offer clients tailor-made and high value commercial intel services.
We consist of a hand-picked team of creative analysts, consultants and information specialists. Our compliance and litigation support is based on a high-end operational approach with a unique pool of specific research resources and a global network of direct human connections and investigation professionals. We speak over a dozen languages and have a broad base of knowledge in political, economic, financial, legal and technical areas.
We provide sophisticated e-discovery and IT-forensics support, together with a unique, in-house developed big-data analysis system. We use a global network of specialist sources and, as a result, we can provide law enforcement-grade, court-submissible evidence in support of our clients’ legal cases.
Sandstone was formed in 2008, a private entity owned by the founding shareholders. The company was started by senior intelligence and security professionals with financial backing from Luxembourg's public investment bank, Société Nationale de Crédit d’Investissement.
We are based in in the heart of Europe, where commercial transparency, financial integrity and an openness for dialogue ensure swift and effective results. As a Luxembourg company, Sandstone operates from a politically and historically neutral base – an advantage when operating in complex international environments. We also benefit from the country’s favourable professional secrecy legislation, giving the company a strong judicial foundation to guarantee utmost client confidentiality and discretion.
Our clients range from blue chip global corporations and international organisations, SMEs, investment funds and banks, to private equity houses, law firms, family offices and HNWIs. To date we have conducted operations in over 100 countries.
Our Code of Ethics summarises the principles that we live by:
Every day, we are asked to help in potentially controversial, dangerous and morally complex cases. We handle highly sensitive information and we give advice in often extreme situations. But whatever we do, we are committed to the highest standards of business integrity and accountability.
The primary function of an intelligence and due diligence organisation is to enable its clients to make sound business decisions in often challenging environments.
To this end, we accompany our clients who operate in ambitious emerging territories and provide them with integrity and governance advice, enabling them to carry out business in areas of lower political and economic stability.
Founding Partner and CEO of Sandstone, Frank gained an MA in Economics and History from the University of Edinburgh and has held several key positions in business and government, including Director of Operations of Luxembourg’s intelligence service. Today, Frank maintains a global network of professional intelligence contacts and manages major client accounts on a day-to-day basis.
Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Sandstone, Filipe has worked within the Ministry of State for the Luxembourg Government. He specialises in enhanced due diligence and integrity reviews; support to compliance requirements in the financial sector (KYC, AML-CTF); strategic and risk analysis; fraud investigations and asset tracing; due diligence training, intelligence methods & techniques.
We provide country risk analysis and regulatory and legislative risk monitoring; we organise political risk assessments, including anti-corruption and bribery (FCPA/UK Bribery Act 2010)
We carry out standard KYC checks; we assist in the compliance of enhanced due diligence to AML/CTF verification, and conduct integrity and reputation research
We are experts in fraud investigation, with the tracing, tracking and recovery of assets using sophisticated forensics tools, in order to provide litigation support and a court-submissible evidence trail
We advise in the maintenance of good governance standards and assist in both conflict avoidance and resolution using careful business diplomacy
In 2015, Sandstone launched TRIX - the Travel Risk Intelligence Exchange.
TRIX is a place where instant intelligence can be obtained on travel risk for any airport in the world.
It uses a programme that takes real-time information from airports, embassies, governments and intel agencies and provides subscribers with an up-to-the-minute travel risk assessment.
TRIX processes huge amounts of unstructured data in order to extract risk-related facts and present them in a comprehensive format that is easy to understand and easy to explore.
TRIX is a private Luxembourg initiative: a collaborative hangout where immediate security observations can be shared and exchanged.
Sandstone is proud to be a member of ESIA, the European Strategic Intelligence Alliance - a unique organisation that helps clients to solve their most challenging research questions and delivers tailored research-based solutions and advice, to the highest standards of quality.
Sandstone is proud to have founded TIGFI in 2008.
TIGFI is a private, independent and impartial non-profit making organisation which serves as a Centre of Excellence and a Forum for matters pertaining to ethical conduct and integrity in business standards and practices in the global financial sector, national financial centres and jurisdictions.
