About Peter Glanville Peter Glanville is a senior managing director at Ankura as well as a chartered accountant with over 20 years’ worth of experience. He has assisted a range of clients across Australia, the UK, Europe and Asia with complex investigations and forensic accounting matters. His wealth of expertise enables him to assist organisations in navigating key risks, investigating allegations of bribery and fraud and responding to regulatory issues. About Ankura Ankura is an independent global expert services and advisory firm that delivers services and end-to-end solutions to help clients at critical inflection points related to conflict, crisis, performance, risk, strategy and transformation. Contact Peter Glanville Senior Managing Director Ankura Consulting Suite 2206, Level 22, Central Plaza, 18 Harbour Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong SAR, China Tel: +852 2233-2500 (Main) +852 5596-2080 (Mobile) +852 3002-2011 (Direct) E: Peter.Glanville@ankura.com www.ankura.com ‘How?’ ‘When?’ ‘Why?’ and ‘How much?’ To get to the bottom of these answers, fraud investigation teams broadly need three distinct disciplines, which can work closely with subject matter (industry) experts: • Forensic accountants – These are the traditional financial detectives who use accounting skills, business acumen and financial expertise to collect and collate evidence from financials, books and records. • Forensic technologists – These specialists extract and secure digital evidence and use fraud and forensic data analytics tools to make sense of allegations and find anomalous relationships, transactions or unusual patterns to locate the electronic version of the needle in the haystack. • Business intelligence (BI) analysts – Often former investigative journalists or lawyers, BI analysts provide human intelligence, searching social media profiles, interviewing former business associates and looking at public records to put the pieces of the puzzle together. It is an iterative process. The forensic technologist may identify a person of interest. The forensic accountant may not initially find any evidence linking them to the allegation. But the BI analyst may uncover the person of interest is the director of a company that received fraudulent payments. Now the forensic accountant can go to work on those company records identifying payments of interest. The best teams work collaboratively, using their disparate skills to run down lines of enquiry and secure robust evidence. What recommendations do you have for legal teams at the start of a fraud investigation? • Prioritise data identification and preservation – Bring on investigators immediately so they can work with you on document retention notices and identify and collect as much data and as many devices as possible before evidence can be destroyed or lost. Sometimes, data preservation is as simple as picking up a backup tape. In other cases, investigators need to image hundreds of different hard drives and mobile devices overnight. • Be mindful of data transfer laws – This is a big issue in Asia where, for example, China’s framework of State Secrets Law, Data Security Law, Cybersecurity Law, and Personal Information Protection Law requires companies to follow strict controls and processes, such as specific document review, before anything can be transferred out of China. • Begin with the end in mind – Your investigators will quickly help you to understand the worst possible case, so you and your client are not blindsided by unexpected evidence. © Copyright 2022. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily the views of Ankura Consulting Group, LLC., its management, its subsidiaries, its affiliates, or its other professionals. Ankura is not a law firm and cannot provide legal advice. EXPERT INSIGHT 65
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