Investigations and disputes

Whether responding to adverse events (e.g. fraud, bribery, sanctions, integrity issues or regulatory investigations) or managing claims and contractual disputes, our team can provide swift and comprehensive support to help you determine the facts and enable you to respond appropriately, safeguarding your organisation's brand and value.

Effectively dealing with these events takes time, effort and investment. Allegations and issues need to be investigated thoroughly, discreetly and quickly, but with the minimum disruption to the business – requiring a breadth of skills. But we are here to help.

64%

of organisations had experienced economic crime within the past two years

Source: PwC's GECS 2022
19%

of frauds were detected automatically by analytics within the past two years

Source: PwC's GECS 2022
16%

of organisations used AI to detect fraud within the past two years

Source: Source: PwC's GECS 2022

Market context and drivers

Regulation and regulators – increased regulation and regulator activity

Examples including:

The failure to prevent fraud offence in the ‘Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill’ coupled with changes to the SFO leadership are expected to widen the SFO’s scope for investigating and prosecuting companies against fraud and other legal breaches.
Increased attention on anti-competition investigations and enforcement, with particular relevance to the TMT sector, resulting in a heightened need for rapid response to regulators.
Expansion of sanctions requirements as a result of geopolitical events, resulting in increased risk of non compliance for companies and being subject to regulatory action.

More litigious culture and more challenging economic environment

Increased appetite to pursue suppliers and third parties either in the context of BAU supplier management or in more one-off situations such as class actions or formal dispute proceedings.

Technological developments

The pace at which technology, and specifically GenAI, is evolving presents an opportunity for us to innovate how we bring value to our clients, particularly where existing fraud detection systems become no longer fit for purpose. However, it also presents a risk to our clients as perpetrators of fraud and/or misconduct look to use GenAI and other technologies in their activities.

Heightened external stakeholder attention and pressures

Consumers, investors and regulators are increasingly holding organisations accountable
for their actions, with the expectation for them to be acting ethically and doing the right thing. The age of viral news means that where a scandal does erupt, social media and 24 hour news can mean organisations can quickly be overtaken by events and lose control. This can result in serious reputational, financial damage, consumer backlash, and even legal consequences.

What we do

Forensic accounting investigations

Regulatory investigations

Crisis

Data Separation in Deals

Incident and integrity investigations

Contractual disputes

eDiscovery and managed review

Cyber / Data breach response

Class action claims assessment

Insurance claims assessment

Proactive data discovery

Our Technology Alliances

Examples of how we have helped our clients

Investigation into Product Failure
Supporting a manufacturer of building materials to respond to the regulator on lack of compliance with product standards and regulations. We used machine learning techniques across a significant volume of data to automatically classify operational behaviours and product specifications allowing the client to identify cases for remediation.

Investigation into collapse of FTX
We assisted the Provisional Liquidators with their investigation into the winding up petition presented to FTX Digital Markets Limited (“FTX”). The investigation is ongoing, with our Restructuring and Forensics team leading workstreams on key financial restructuring and insolvency support, forensics, cryptoassets data capture, claims and investigations expertise.

Investigation into historical accounting irregularities
Investigation, forensic data capture, and litigation support services provided to Hewlett Packard (“HP”) and its legal advisors (both in the UK and US) in their investigation of, and legal claims with respect to, alleged fraudulent accounting by the former CEO and CFO of UK software company, Autonomy.

Regulatory support in the Energy, Utility & Resources industry
Providing forensic accounting, e-discovery and data analytics services to a multinational in their responses to Regulators in multiple jurisdictions. We worked alongside the legal team, and often presented directly to the Regulators on behalf of our client.