The Romanian silver mine
========================

The Romanian silver mine is the case John Kiriakou tells to explain what private intelligence analysis is, as distinct from private investigation, and, he says, "a lot more fun."

Working for himself between government jobs, he had three big clients: the ninth-largest hedge fund in the world, a mutual fund, and the largest mining company in the world, plus a contract for an oil company. They asked very specific questions. One of them was: who is going to win the Romanian municipal elections in September?

The method

Kiriakou's reaction was that he knew nothing about Romania. His solution was LinkedIn and a shared religion: he is Greek Orthodox and, as he puts it, everybody in Romania is Orthodox, so he sent connection requests to everybody who looked interesting and happened to be Orthodox in Romania, about sixty people, and asked his question. One of them gave him private polling data.

Why they were asking

He then did what he says a good analyst does and asked the client why they cared. They told him: they were thinking of buying a silver mine, the silver lay underneath a village, and to mine it the whole village would have to be destroyed. If the socialists won they would not be allowed to do it; if the conservatives won, the villagers would simply be relocated.

Kiriakou told them the polls said the conservatives would win. They bought the mine at the pre-election price. The conservatives won, the village was moved out and destroyed, and the company took billions of dollars' worth of silver out of the ground.

He files the episode alongside the other questions clients put to him, should I do business in Yemen, should I buy that silver mine in Romania, as the everyday substance of commercial intelligence work.

See also

- Private Intelligence
- Oman Oil Lease
- Cypriot Billionaire Investigation
- The Greek Orthodox Church
