Media & Investigations

Some stories are hidden. Others are actively buried.

Founded on Fleet Street Investigative Experience

MARA Intelligence was founded by Christine Joanna Hart, a former Fleet Street investigative journalist, Sunday Times bestselling author and private investigator with more than 25 years’ experience across journalism, intelligence gathering and human-source enquiries.

Christine was trained by former MI6 and CID officers and later worked for national newspapers, including the Daily Mail and The Sunday Times. Her work for The Sunday Times Insight team included investigations into loyalist and republican paramilitary activity involving the Ulster Defence Association, the Ulster Freedom Fighters and the Real IRA.


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Not a Desk Job

This was never a career conducted entirely from a desk. The work involved operating under carefully constructed cover, developing sources, finding witnesses, arranging and running surveillance operations and entering environments where an announced journalistic approach would have closed every door. Christine has visited prisons, interviewed serious serial offenders and worked inside investigations involving terrorism, organised crime, corruption, blackmail and people who had compelling reasons to keep their business hidden.

We understand the pressure of a live story. A source may disappear, a witness may lose courage, a document may be removed, and somebody who was prepared to talk yesterday may have been warned by tomorrow. We know how to move quickly without allowing speed, excitement or a persuasive source to become a substitute for evidence.

Working With Broadcasters, Production Companies and Newspapers

Christine has extensive experience working with documentary makers, production companies, broadcasters and national newspapers requiring serious investigative depth. MARA undertakes the research behind the finished story: finding the person nobody else can locate, identifying the company behind another company, checking an allegation against original records, locating the witness omitted from the accepted account and discovering who benefits from the version everybody has been given.


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The Kind of Briefs We Take On


A brief might involve a missing painting moved through dealers, intermediaries and shell companies; a boat or aircraft whose true ownership disappears behind offshore registrations; a businessman operating under several corporate identities; or an organised-crime network concealed behind apparently legitimate businesses, relatives and professional advisers.

It might involve stolen cargo moving through a West African port; a counterfeit supply chain connecting manufacturers in Asia to distributors in Europe; a sanctioned individual using proxies to retain control of international assets; or a company that appears to have vanished while its directors, money and operations continue elsewhere under new names.

Another assignment may begin with a suspicious insurance claim: an apparently stolen asset, an accident that does not match the physical evidence, a claimant whose reported limitations conflict with their activities, or a business loss supported by paperwork that begins to unravel when witnesses are interviewed. MARA can combine records, surveillance, filming, photography, witness evidence and source enquiries to establish what actually happened.

Covert & Discreet Operations

Where a conventional interview would expose the enquiry, MARA can help plan a lawful covert operation: identifying and briefing the right operative, creating a credible approach, organising surveillance and deciding what evidence must be obtained before the operation ends. Covert work is not theatre. It succeeds because the cover is ordinary enough to be believed and the objective is precise enough to be proved.

MARA can also arrange overt or discreet filming in difficult locations, obtain photographic evidence, identify and prepare witnesses, conduct recorded interviews and support production teams working away from their normal territory. Evidence is gathered with its final use in mind, whether for publication, broadcast, litigation, an insurance decision or an internal investigation.

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Our Work Includes


  • OSINT and HUMINT
  • Witness and contributor tracing
  • Due diligence
  • Covert enquiries
  • Surveillance planning
  • Prison and offender research
  • Insurance-fraud investigation
  • Litigation support
  • Reports ranging from an urgent intelligence briefing to a book-length investigation

International Reach

MARA works through a global network of trusted investigators, researchers, sources, camera operators and specialist professionals. Enquiries can be developed across the UK, Europe, North America, Africa and Asia, including India and Pakistan, or extended into harder-to-read jurisdictions such as China and Russia.

International investigations rarely remain in one country. The individual may live in London, the company may be registered offshore, the money may pass through Dubai, the goods may originate in India or China, and the decisive witness may be living under another name in Europe. MARA follows the enquiry across those borders rather than stopping where an ordinary database ceases to be useful.

We also trace missing people, companies, directors, works of art, vessels, aircraft and other valuable or disputed assets. Cross-border work may involve corporate opacity, local languages, false identities, fragmented records, political influence or criminal networks operating behind respectable commercial fronts.

Media Crisis & Rapid Response

When a client, organisation or public figure is caught inside a developing media crisis, speed matters—but so does knowing what is true.

MARA provides rapid investigative support when allegations are moving towards publication or already dominating the news. We establish who is briefing whom, check the evidence, locate missing documents and witnesses, reconstruct the chronology and identify the fact most likely to alter the public or legal position.

This is not public-relations varnish. It is the intelligence required before anybody decides what can safely be denied, admitted, challenged or disclosed.

MARA has trusted journalistic contacts, investigators, experienced stringers, field producers, researchers, fixers and camera crews across the world. We can mobilise people on the ground quickly to obtain footage, approach witnesses, verify local intelligence, trace a subject or support a developing investigation in another jurisdiction. Our network gives us access to people who know the territory, speak the language and understand the local power structures.

MARA does not simply collect information.

We find the fact that changes the story.

Christine Joanna Hart

Founder, MARA Intelligence

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