Disclosure of Assets in Divorce: Potanina v Potanin
19 Sep 2019The UK’s biggest ever divorce case is due to be heard in the High Court after a Russian oligarch’s wife launched a legal bid to claim a third of his fortune. Vladimir Potanin and Natalia Potanina had been married for 30 years when in 2013, Vladimir, who has been described as the second richest man […]
One investigation leads to another
19 Sep 2019Rather like peeling an onion, financial investigations can often lead to further explorations of financial management. A good example of this is the Insolvency Service’s recent winding up of a magazine publisher. In this case, the Insolvency Service wound up a publishing company that produced magazines that supported the emergency services. The court heard that […]
LCF Financial investigation likely to be frustrated by legal action
30 Aug 2019Administrators for mini-bond firm London Capital & Finance (LCF) have warned that investors will have to wait longer than previously thought to receive their first dividend and that it could take several years to complete their investigations into the firm’s collapse due to the “level of complexity” in the case. Also, they estimate that investors […]
Allegations of financial impropriety
29 Aug 2019Former senior executives at football pitch operator, Goals Soccer Centre (“Goals”), are under investigation over historic financial irregularities. The former Chief Executive and Finance Chief are alleged to have falsified invoices and deleted old emails in order to destroy evidence. Indeed, one forensic investigation has allegedly found evidence that one of the two individuals under […]
The importance of paperwork
29 Aug 2019A request for the public’s help in a financial investigation into the demise of London and Capital Finance (LCF) by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) highlights the importance of keeping records as evidence. The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) also urged any members of the public affected by LCF’s closure to keep any relevant paperwork safe. […]
Calling in the experts
29 Aug 2019Medway Council has called in forensic accountants following the launch of a fraud investigation into the activities of the council’s trading company. According to the Council’s leader, some of the projects undertaken by Medway Commercial Group (MCG) were “a departure from its expertise” and were a key weakness according to a probe into its management […]
Rise of the Unexplained Wealth Order
29 Aug 2019The Financial Times (FT) has explained how the National Crime Agency (NCA) is using an Unexplained Wealth Order (UWO) to investigate a woman suspected of having links to paramilitary organisations and a separate piece on the potential use of UWOs to tackle “domestic” organised crime. UWOs were introduced by the Government last year in a […]
First anti-corruption order to freeze property assets
29 Aug 2019The National Crime Agency (NCA) has announced it has used anti-corruption powers in a serious organised crime case for the first time, after freezing assets owned by a businessman with suspected links to gangs involved in trafficking, armed robberies and supplying firearms. The NCA has secured an Unexplained Wealth Order (UWO) to force the man […]
Arrests over Patisserie Valerie alleged fraud
29 Aug 2019According to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), five people have been arrested and questioned over alleged accounting fraud at Patisserie Valerie, although Luke Johnson, Patisserie Valerie’s former chairman and a columnist for The Sunday Times, was not among those arrested. Mr Johnson, who was the firm’s largest shareholder when it failed in January with the […]
Tailor, Taxman, Soldier, Spy
29 Aug 2019A tax thief and money launderer has been landed with a bill for £615,000, which he must pay or face extra time in jail. Raymond Thomas was jailed for four years in November 2017, after an HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) investigation found he had stolen £1.6 million. In an attempt to hide his crime, […]
‘Money mules’ hoping to pass unnoticed
29 Aug 2019Recent research suggests that middle-aged people are increasingly – and often unwittingly – being targeted by criminal gangs to launder money. According to fraud prevention service Cifas, the number of so-called ‘money mules’ aged between 40 and 60 increased by 35 per cent in 2019 compared with 2017. A money mule, sometimes called a ‘smurfer’, […]
Financial investigation results in share price rising
29 Aug 2019Shares in Kraft Heinz rose after the food giant announced it had completed an accounting investigation and changed its financial practices accordingly. The business finally filed its results to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) having concluded its internal investigation into accounting irregularities in its procurement division. The filing, completed more than three months late, […]
Clarity is key
29 Aug 2019A recent First Tier Tribunal (FTT) case highlights that not only must a case argument contain all of the relevant information but that this information must be presented clearly or the evidence upholding the argument becomes impenetrable. As any psychiatrist would agree, no two minds think in exactly the same way, but most people think […]
Missing coins mystery
08 Mar 2019Financial investigators have discovered that the digital wallets of the QuadrigaCX exchange had been emptied of millions in cryptocurrency months before founder Gerald Cotten died.
Where has the money come from?
01 Mar 2019Yet again the work of the forensic accountant has come to the public’s attention via television. In this week’s episode of Shetland, DI Jimmy Perez asks one of his sergeants to get ‘the forensic team’ to find out how a suspect in a people trafficking case made his money.
Refuting the evidence: London Capital & Finance
25 Feb 2019Investors who put savings into high risk mini-bonds with London Capital & Finance (LCF), totalling £236 million, are fearful about what has happened to their money after the firm’s recent collapse.
Financial investigation handed over to police
15 Feb 2019Police have been handed evidence from a year-long investigation into financial irregularities allegedly committed by the former Chief Executive of the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC), Jeremy Newmark. An investigation began in March 2018 after a leaked document alleged financial impropriety against Mr Newmark, who stood down as Chief Executive in 2013 on the grounds of […]
Refuting the evidence
15 Feb 2019Home Secretary Sajid Javid has recently agreed to the extradition of Indian billionaire Vijay Mallya back to India to face charges of alleged fraud and money laundering to an estimated Rs 90 billion. However, Mr Mallya’s position has always been that there is “no evidence to justify” his extradition. The case started back in 2013 […]
New lines of enquiry
04 Feb 2019The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is now investigating how celebrity “influencers” endorse products online and is including the role of the social media platforms they use in its investigation. The consumer protection and competition watchdog has told these influencers that they must tell their followers if they are being paid or otherwise rewarded to […]
Tesco fraud trial collapses
29 Jan 2019The former UK Finance Director of Tesco, Carl Rogberg, was cleared this week of fraud and false accounting, while another trial of Tesco’s former UK CEO and the former Commercial Director collapsed last month after the judge ruled the evidence to be “too weak”. Both trials were brought on the allegation that the supermarket’s profits […]
On the trail of dirty money
21 Jan 2019The National Crime Agency (NCA) has seized an 8.9 carat Cartier diamond ring worth more than £1 million from the wife of an Azerbaijani banker. The ring, which was bought in Harrods in 2011 by Jahangir Hajiyev for his wife Zamira for £1,190,000 plus VAT, was seized at a London jewellers, where it had been […]
Rush to fill economic crime jobs
16 Jan 2019The Financial Times has run an article on how financial crime vacancies in the legal sector are soaring because of the explosion of cases to both prosecute and defend. Because of the size of these cases, many of which are global in reach, people who would otherwise never have been implicated in such issues are […]
Lavish lifestyle clue to crime
14 Jan 2019A bungling businessman who was caught with drugs to the value of £77,500 has been handed a confiscation order under the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) for £4.5 million because of his lavish spending. Peter Carroll was arrested in 2013 and caught with cannabis plants with a street value of around £77,500. However, following a […]
Taxman tackles financial crime
14 Jan 2019HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has recently published its ‘Top 10’ successful prosecutions for tax crimes over the past 12 months. The cases include a variety of perpetrators, from business people and church leaders to the masterminds behind organised crime. All the cases involved painstaking, forensic financial investigation, much of it on a global scale. […]
Two acquitted over tax fraud
07 Dec 2018Two former Directors of supermarket giant Tesco have been acquitted of a £250 million fraud and false accounting charge. The two men had been accused of being aware that income was being wrongly included in the company’s financial records to meet targets and to make Tesco look financially ‘healthier’ than it actually was. However, the […]