A fraud accountant has a number of roles in fraudulent matters. Business crime involves stealing assets and using deception to cover the trail within the financial records. Therefore, one of the main roles that an accountancy expert can have is in facilitating the crimes for the criminals.
In fraudulent matters that involve accountants as the criminals, then these accountants stand a good chance. They may even fall foul of their colleagues who consider that they know too much crucial information. There is a long history of witness intimidation and sometimes a gang will do much worse than just threaten. However, can there be a risk to the forensic accountants called upon to help unravel and prosecute frauds?
A fraud accountant will be asked to examine accountancy records used in a business crime. Points that need addressing will include the method by which the assets were taken, how much was taken and where it has gone to? The answers to these questions can assist the prosecuting authorities to convict fraudsters and take all their assets back from them in confiscation proceedings.
On the other hand the forensic expert might be asked to help present a defendant's case. A fair trial is the right of a collared fraudster. The losses might not be just as the prosecutors maintain and this needs explaining. Complicated frauds are so often very hard to understand. Therefore, a forensic accountancy expert will be requested to examine the books and records in order to explain the business crime. The suspect may well be assisted in avoiding punishment by this explanation. There is always a chance that he isn't guilty.
So what happens if the forensic accounting expert fails to "get the criminal off" as it might be perceived? The expert must be non partisan, not employed just to prevent justice from prevailing. Some villains might want revenge on anybody they think failed to get them off. It is a distinct possibility, though thankfully does not seem to happen often in practice.
A forensic accountant very often works in the background, and rarely even attends a court hearing, the criminal defence team relying on a written expert report to help their case. This is why presentation skills and the written report are both equally important. Many will say that the main attribute of an expert is the ability to give great oral evidence. But it is usually the times when a report is not fully understood that the accountant has to be called to the witness box to be asked questions. So in order to reduce the risk of raising his or her profile in a criminal case, the clever expert forensic accounting witness must ensure that their written work is top quality.
Being involved in criminal cases that include drugs, extortion, fraud and money laundering can put the forensic accountant at risk. But an independent and objective expert, working behind the scenes doing the best he can, is happy to leave the more risky front end work to the fraud regulators.
Mark Jenner is a fraud accountant who specialises in forensic accountancy and expert witness cases. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, a Member of the Expert Witness Institute, a Certified Fraud Examiner and has a Masters Degree in Fraud Management. He assist victims of fraud, criminal defence lawyers and fraud regulators.
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