THE AGENDA Liquid Lunch How does Nardello & Co, renowned for its investigative work,


manage to steer so clear of controversy? Its founder, Dan Nardello, tells Edwin Smith about the tricks of the trade


because he ‘fell in love with a Roman woman who became my penultimate wife’. Quickly, he adds that his ‘third and final’ wife is ‘a keeper’; the pair recently celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary. In 1994, looking for a move to the


Italian capital to be with said penultimate wife, he landed a job at a risk consultancy and managed to convince the business to locate its first international office there. By 2003, the company had changed hands and he had relocated to London. Then he set up his own venture, which has since become one of the most important firms in the sector. The waitress arrives. ‘I know the menu


by heart,’ Nardello says. He’s been a regular for years and will be back at the hotel around Christmas. While I opt for the wild mushroom and truffle risotto, he tells the waitress he has already given his order to her colleague: ‘My usual.’ ‘A glass of wine?’, he suggests, then turns back to the waitress. ‘I’m just gonna have a glass of your Chablis, which I have imbibed in industrial quantities.’ I’ll have one too. ‘So what can I tell you?’ Nardello asks.


We start with his firm’s ongoing work for the Macrons, who have launched an action in Delaware against the right-wing influencer Candace Owens in response to her claims that French president Emmanuel Macron’s wife Brigitte was born male. Nardello & Co was brought in by Tom


DAN NARDELLO, THE FOUNDER of US-headquartered private investigations firm Nardello & Co, has suggested we meet for lunch at Claridge’s. We met here once before, so I know


where he’ll be: his usual spot in the ‘Reading Room’, a secluded part of the hotel that adjoins its ‘Foyer’ restaurant. When I get to the table, I see he’s


accompanied by a representative from the firm’s London communications agency, Hawthorn Advisors, the outfit co-founded by Ben Elliot, former Tory Party chairman and co-founder of


concierge company Quintessentially. We get the greetings out of the way and begin the interview. Would it be OK if I turn my recorder


on? ‘I’ll have to mind my P’s and Q’s,’ Nardello says. Surely something a man in his line of work is used to, I reply. ‘Yeah, I’m used to it,’ he says, with a New York twang. ‘But I’m never very good at it.’ Perhaps that explains the PR. Early in his career Nardello, 68, worked


as a public prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, but ended up in his current line of work, he likes to say,


Clare, the Macrons’ American lawyer, who Nardello calls ‘the best defamation lawyer in the United States’, to do two things. First, document the ‘various defamatory statements’ and ‘memorialise them’ in a way that sets the legal team up for the trial. ‘The other mandate,’ Nardello says, ‘was to find out who [Owens] was. I had never heard of her, but I’m sort of ignorant. In the course of that, we were able to evidence all these connections to the far right in France and elsewhere.’ Much of the material was in the public domain already, ‘but putting it together, teasing out inferences, making connections, corroborating – that’s an important part of what we do.’ Another high-profile instruction saw the firm play a crucial role in the unmasking of the man behind defamatory celebrity gossip website Tattle Life. Nardello was ‘shocked’ to


IGNACIO LEDESMA


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116