Simon Cowell’s pregnant lover, Lauren Silverman, has just been granted a ‘quickie’ divorce in the States from her husband of 10 years and it is alleged that she waited until their tenth wedding anniversary before telling him that she wanted to split, in the hopes of a larger financial settlement from their prenuptial agreement. As […]
The National Audit Office has recently announced that it will be publishing a report later this year on the management and enforcement of confiscation orders, which usually requires the services of a forensic accountant to evaluate how much they should be, although they also follow the money trail in many other matters.  Confiscation orders, which are […]
News that private security company G4S has this week withdrawn its bid for a £150m electronic tagging contract with the Government will come as little surprise, as the firm has been accused of overcharging on a previous contract by tens of millions of pounds. Justice Minister Chris Grayling decided to instigate a forensic audit of […]
Bribery allegations have been in the news this week, with GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK) finance chief in China being refused permission to leave the country while an investigation is being carried out into the firm’s Chinese operation, and Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone being charged with bribery in Germany over the sale of a stake in F1 […]
The Post Office has this week revealed the results of an independent investigation, which proved there were software defects in its Horizon computer system, potentially leading to false claims against sub-postmasters, who, in some cases, went to jail for fraud, theft or false accounting. More than a 100 sub-postmasters claim to have been wrongly prosecuted […]
A foiled attempt to defraud a borough council in Wales out of over £2 million, has highlighted the need for businesses to not only be vigilant when it comes to financial transactions with customers and contractors; but to also employ the services of forensic accountants when they believe something may be amiss. The attempted fraud, […]
News on June 26 that Pope Francis has set up a commission of inquiry to review the activities of the Vatican bank means that an army of investigators are set to pore over details of its 19,000 accounts, 114 employees and £4.6bn worth of assets. It was the second time in as many weeks that […]
The High Court ruled earlier this month that the intellectual property rights for software created within a now-defunct partnership had belonged to the partnership rather than the partner who created it, who was the ex-wife of the other partner. As with the divorce itself, no doubt, a lot of the arguments will have centred around […]
The National Forensic Authority has recently published its Annual Fraud Indicator, which reveals that the estimated loss to the UK economy on an annual basis through fraud is £52bn, although the report also points out that the fraud reported is “a fraction of the fraud that remains out of sight”. However, while the report discusses […]
Considering that divorce is up there with bereavement and moving home as one of the most traumatic things a person can expect to endure in his or her lifetime, not to mention an expensive exercise, it is no wonder that people wonder whether employing a forensic accountant is worth the money, but in almost every […]
What difference does an unrepresented party make to the way an expert witness would wish to be instructed and paid? Legal aid cuts introduced in April 2013 will to a great extent remove public funding for civil  proceedings  i.e. that part of our legal system that involves relationships between individuals –  the law of contracts. […]
The BBC recently reported that campaigners opposed to the high-speed rail line through the Midlands are seeking legal advice on taking the Government to court; a move which acts as a reminder that forensic accountants can not only be used in high-profile divorces but also to provide expert accountancy evidence in compulsory compensation disputes. Many forensic […]
Although the Office for National Statistics says that the divorce rate is the lowest it has been since 1977, in 2011, which is the most recent year it has statistics on, 10.8 marriages in 1,000 still ended in divorce and the landmark White v White case means that women need a champion when it comes […]
There are daily accounts in the news of people who have been found guilty of embezzlement, fiddling their tax, hiding assets in divorce cases or perpetrating fraud on a grand scale, but little or nothing is heard about those who are accused of such crimes but then found not guilty because they employed a good […]
The National Audit Office announced last month that its National Fraud Initiative (NFI) has saved the taxpayer over £1bn through employing forensic accounting methods and tracking cash lost through fraud, overpayment or error.  As forensic accountants do, the NFI’s investigators cross-matched information from over 1,300 organisations in the public and private sectors and flagged up inconsistencies […]
As credit rating agency Experian reveals that mortgage fraud jumped by nearly 10 per cent last year, mortgage companies may have to ask forensic accountants to verify applications. According to Experian, 38 in every 10,000 mortgage applications was fraudulent in 2012 compared with 35 in 2011 and the rise is being blamed on the economic […]
With the introduction of Universal Credit giving rise to fears of mass benefit fraud, officials suspicious of people would do well to follow the methods of forensic accountants in tracking down offenders. Universal Credit will replace benefits including income support and housing benefit with a single payment and millions of existing benefit claimants will be […]
As two former Crown Prosecution Service employees are convicted of making more than £1m worth of bogus claims for taxi fares, suspicious employers could put their minds at rest – or find out if their concerns are valid – by getting a forensic accountant to go over their accounts. There are usually tell-tale signs that […]
Finding the assets of criminals can be very difficult when people are determined to hide them but the case is made even more difficult when the perpetrators know exactly what they are doing, as in the recent case of two professionals who laundered more than £1.8m of criminal cash from VAT fraud. However, forensic accountants, […]
As a high-flying London barrister starts a three-and-a-half year sentence for evading VAT over a twelve year period, investigative accountants must start the lengthy process of finding the cash he withheld from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). Rohan Pershad was deregistered for VAT in 2000 following a history of failure to submit tax returns and […]
As the top ten hotspots for divorce in the UK are named, divorcing couples should ensure that they have the number of a good forensic accountant in case their current other half tries to hide any of the joint assets to which they are entitled. Unfortunately, with around 42 per cent of marriages in the […]
A claims management company has been shut down and two fraudsters jailed after a ‘crash for cash’ fraud ring was exposed through the work of the Metropolitan Police and painstaking backroom work on the criminals’ financial dealings. Last week company secretary of the firm and the ring’s mastermind, Andre Malagiac was sentenced to 12 months […]
Three more people have been arrested over alleged fraud at welfare-to-work company A4e, highlighting the importance of forensic auditors, who first picked up on anomalies at the company in 2009 during a routine internal audit. The audit unearthed evidence of staff claiming for putting people into non-existent jobs, jobs that did not qualify for payment […]
With the news that Caterpillar Chief Executive Doug Oberhelman has accepted blame for overpaying a key acquisition in China because of a “deliberate accounting misconduct”, it would be wise for businesses to remember to bring in the investigative accountants if conducting a due diligence exercise. If a company the size of Caterpillar, the world’s largest manufacturer of construction and mining equipment […]
With fraud of some sort or another being in the news almost every day, forensic accountants are being thrust into the limelight, with an article on the practice being used in divorce settlements even making it into the London Evening Standard this week. This is because forensic accountants specialise in following the money trail and […]