How do you handle reputation when an executive is arrested?

Executive arrest situations are among the highest-stakes engagements we handle, and they call for real restraint in the first week. The legal posture controls everything: what the company can say, what the executive can say, who is allowed to speak publicly, and on what timeline. In that window, reputation work is mostly preparation rather than action. Our principle for this category is simple: act less, prepare more, in the first weeks.

Week one: restraint and preparation

The opening days are about coordination and readiness, not public moves. The work concentrates in three areas.

1. Legal coordination and posture. Counsel sets what can be said and by whom, and reputation follows that posture rather than driving it. Governance decisions about the executive’s continued role belong to the board and counsel, not to reputation.
2. Daily AI narrative monitoring. Daily AIQ monitoring across all eight engines tells the company what stakeholders are actually seeing as the story moves.
3. Infrastructure preparation. Work on the entity layer and owned properties, plus content prepared so it can support any of the possible resolutions.

As facts emerge: three prepared paths

Over the following weeks and months, the infrastructure built in week one gets used. The prepared content branches to match whichever outcome the case reaches.

Resolution	Prepared content posture
Exoneration	Factual content that reflects the exoneration outcome.
Plea	Measured content covering the plea.
Conviction	Content covering the company’s response and the changes it made.

With all three paths prepared in advance, the company can respond quickly and accurately whichever way the facts resolve, instead of building a narrative from scratch under pressure.