Investigation related to alleged corruption
Questa was engaged by an international law firm representing a large industrial services company, following allegations of corruption in public procurement by the company’s management and detention of key executives.
The purpose of the project was to perform an independent investigation into the matter to conclude to what extent the allegations were substantiated and thus give the Client’s auditor, a Big4 company, sufficient comfort that the Client’s parent company’s management was not involved and thus any statutory audit-related representations made by them can be relied upon.
- Independent investigation
- eDiscovery based case
- Targeted research exercise
Scope of work:
This case required substantial eDiscovery element, whereby almost 1TB of electronic data was captured from the client. The data represented email correspondence, instant messaging data, cloud-based Office 365 data and images of hard discs of the client’s staff.
The eDiscovery review was combined with a targeted research exercise, whereby a number of the client’s vendors were investigated for their potential relationships between one another, with the Client’s staff and with Politically Exposed Persons (PEP’s) as well as their credibility and integrity.
- Addressing the auditor's requirements
- Circumstantial evidence revealed
- Fraudulent schemes
Result:
The investigation revealed circumstantial evidence of fraudulent schemes at the Client’s firm, whereby funds were funneled out to shady vendors. One possible explanation of this scheme was that this was an element of a corruption scheme, however no evidence of the Client’s or Client’s parent-company’s management involvement was identified. This satisfied the auditor’s requirements.
