From tracking top managers to piquant dramas of the 19th century. How Alexander Azarov's detective agency "Reks" works

Photo: agency-reks.eu

"Business is business"

At the beginning of our conversation, we agreed that this article would only be about business and we would not touch upon issues and topics related to politics.

According to Azarov, he does not want "all this dirt" from political wrangling to be "stuffed in" before the description of his new case. "Business is business."

He says that today he is focused on his business project: "We work for ourselves, earn our own money, and depend on no one."

What is the Reks agency

The "Reks" agency publishes service advertisements on social media. The range is wide: from checking companies and "your children's friends" to searching for information in archives across the entire European Union.

The name, as founder Alexander Azarov admits, appeared spontaneously, but with a precise calculation for nostalgia:

Павялічыць

Stylized logo of the "Reks" agency

"As children, we all watched the series 'Inspector Rex' about detectives. It's still very popular, and, of course, such a name stuck in my head," Azarov says. "When we thought about what to call it, that was the first thing that came to mind. Besides, the German Shepherd from the series always evoked positive emotions in me. But we spell it differently, with 'ks' at the end."

"This is the only detective agency opened by Belarusians; no other such agencies exist," Azarov emphasizes. "I am a member of the Polish Society of Licensed Detectives (PSLD). The license is valid throughout the European Union. This means we can work in any EU country; you just need to inform the local special services where you are going, that you will be working there in such a city for such a period."

"White intelligence" and tracking directors

The main direction of work today is assistance to business and OSINT, which in Polish is called "biały wywiad" (white intelligence). The agency works closely with the Polish National Debt Register (KRD).

"There are a number of entrepreneurs who open firms, then the firm gets into debt, they open a new, clean firm, and operate anew," Azarov explains fraudulent schemes. "We can trace these connections and determine that the person is an unscrupulous entrepreneur. So that anyone making an advance payment already knows that this person might not fulfill their obligations."

Foreign investors who want to check their own top managers are frequent clients. The main tool here is professional external surveillance.

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Alexander Azarov. Photo provided by the subject

"Foreign investors opened a company in another country, hired top-level managers, and want to check if their property status matches their earnings," the detective says. "What cars they drive, whether real estate is registered to their relatives, which countries they visit, what lifestyle they lead. Maybe he uses drugs, or maybe he is an unscrupulous manager and leaks information about his company to competitors."

Marriage contracts and courts

The agency also collects evidence for civil and criminal court cases. "For example, we can record during surveillance that a witness meets with some interested party beforehand, who incites him to give false testimony," shares the founder of "Reks". "A detective's report is strong evidence for the court."

Delicate family matters are also included in the price list. "In Poland, prenuptial agreements are signed, and in the event of infidelity, one can receive a larger share of the property," says Azarov. "People turn to a detective to prove the fact of infidelity, or to prove, when dividing children, that the other party is not raising them properly."

All work is carried out within the strict legal framework of the European Union. "Signing a contract is mandatory. Only under a signed contract does a detective have the right to collect personal data of people," says the interlocutor. "This is official secret, confidentiality. You collected information, gave it to the client, that's it. It cannot be published anywhere; the client decides what to do with it: keep it for themselves, contact the police, the court, or make it public."

KGB execution lists and archive secrets

The second large layer of work is searching for missing persons and genealogical research. To read old documents from the times of Prussia or the Russian Empire in the archives of Lublin, Warsaw, or Białystok, detectives have to decipher texts not only in Polish or Russian but even in Latin.

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Alexander Azarov. Photo provided by the subject

Alexander Azarov admits that the most interesting information is hidden precisely in criminal cases and interrogation protocols. Documents on Stalinist repressions against Poles in the 1920s-1930s, to which access is practically denied in Belarus today, are of particular value.

"Poland has partially scanned these KGB cases, and they are stored in Warsaw, and you can look at them," he says. "But in Belarus, the KGB doesn't provide them. It's very difficult to get these documents there; names are obscured, many restrictions... Here in Poland, it's much simpler. They provide the entire criminal case, which can be fully photographed. And there you go - there will be data of witnesses who testified against your ancestor, because of whom he received the highest penalty."

"Recently, I was looking for the ancestors of a man whose grandfather was exiled to Kalmykia in the 1940s during repatriation, and these searches led me to a village near Hajnówka.

I found his relatives, very hospitable people. The owner of the house is a forester in the Białowieża Forest. It turned out that they had seven brothers, but in the 1940s, only one of them said he was Belarusian, and he was exiled to Kalmykia, while the other six called themselves Poles and remained in their homeland. Although they themselves call themselves neither Belarusians nor Poles, but 'tuteishiya' (locals)."

This exiled brother was connected with the Home Army and had a German prison sentence behind him, so, most likely, he deliberately called himself a Belarusian to be voluntarily exiled further away and to prevent the Soviet authorities from imprisoning him."

Alexander was told that some of the named "Belarusians" went into exile with entire wagons of property, with horses and cows, but in the bare Kalmyk steppe they lost absolutely everything and then returned from there naked and barefoot.

"He's like a beast in sex": family dramas of the past

Old documents often reveal stories worthy of a screen adaptation. Azarov recalls a case he found in the archive of the Białystok Institute for Noble Maidens. It was a petition from a hereditary noblewoman Plewaka (presumably a relative of Fyodor Plewaka, a famous Minsk lawyer in the Russian Empire):

"She describes her miserable life: that her husband cheats on her, beats her, and that he is even 'like a beast in sex.' That is, he likes 'perverse sex.' She has eight children there, she fled through the window... And she asks one of the princesses to take her children for free education, because she has no money to support them."

Azarov says that these findings show that social mobility worked even then: children of military personnel (for example, those wounded in the Crimean War) and impoverished nobles could study at the state's expense. The detective was also impressed by the level of education of young people at that time.

"In Lublin, I found the diploma of a person who studied in a gymnasium, from 1906 or 1908... English was not there. They learned Latin, Greek, French, and German," Alexander marvels. "These people were very educated at that time, knowing four languages. And not from an institute, but a gymnasium!"

Another story that impressed Alexander was written by a young man, about 18-19 years old, from Volhynia, who ended up in Kyiv. In his letter, he writes that in 1915, during the First World War, his family, along with other refugees, was forced to flee towards Samara. On the way, the Germans detained his mother and sisters, sending them to some camp, but he, along with his father, brother, and uncle, still managed to reach Samara.

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Letter from a boy from Kyiv. Photo from Linkedin Agencja Detektywistyczna REKS

The family's tragedy did not end there: the father soon died, and the boys were left alone with their uncle. However, their own uncle simply handed over his nephews to an orphanage, took all their property, and returned to Volhynia. Soon after, the boy's brother also died, and he was left alone.

The boy escaped from this orphanage, made his way to Kyiv on his own, and from there wrote to the Polish government, as Volhynia had then fallen under Polish rule, asking to be returned home.

It is precisely working with primary sources that allows one to truly understand the past. "It's one thing what is written in textbooks - the state wants to impose its view on certain events," summarizes the founder of the "Reks" agency. "But when you immerse yourself in these documents and read them directly, you see something completely different."

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