Who
Code19 is led by Cedric Witek, a multicultural information professional with nearly two decades of specialist experience in managing high-level and high-sensitivity investigations in the business and political realms. These assignments have spanned the world, including Asia, Europe, the former Soviet Union, North America and the Indian subcontinent. Cedric is also an accomplished political analyst and has written political risk assessments on China, Malaysia, Iran and other countries. He has lived in many different countries in Asia, Europe and South America, and is also a frequent returnee to the Middle East.
Cedric started his career as an investigative analyst at the Beijing office of one of the world’s leading security firms, and later honed his skills in Hong Kong with the investigative arm of a Big Four accounting firm under the aegis of former senior officers in the Organised Crime & Triad Bureau and the Commercial Crime Bureau of the Hong Kong Police. Most recently he was Partner and Director of Operations of an elite investigative consultancy in China, based in Shanghai, before joining the Business Intelligence unit of one of the world’s largest professional-services firms in London.
During this time Cedric participated in hundreds of highly complex investigations for the world’s leading multinationals, mostly top-tier international law firms and Fortune 500 companies in manufacturing, finance and real estate. These included high-level fraud investigations involving millions or tens of millions of dollars in misappropriated revenue, investigations on intellectual property theft, investigative due diligences on prospective partner companies and individuals, pre-employment investigations on senior hires, asset searches for litigation purposes, investigating serious organised acts of violence and intimidation on client employees, but also conducting market surveys and geostrategic assignments.
These assignments have ranged from the fairly mundane (stealthy organised-crime involvement in joint ventures) to the fairly spectacular (grenade thrown over the fence of a petrochemical plant). Cedric has also taken part in many pro bono assignments involving gross human rights abuses.
Cedric graduated from Durham University in the United Kingdom with a First-Class Honours Degree in Chinese Studies and Political Science. A linguist and former professional translator, he is fluent in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin and Cantonese, and has some degree of proficiency in half a dozen other languages such as Malay and Arabic. He also knows a word of Italian or two, mostly to do with cooking.