Assurance Services

Fraud and investigations

Fraud and corruption are facts of business life. Studies show that global businesses can lose up to 6% of revenues to fraud. That’s a massive number. You have to be vigilant. You must have effective ways to safeguard the security and integrity of your enterprise and its value. And you have to investigate allegations of potential misconduct.

Uncover the facts. Experienced in forensic accounting, financial and securities regulation, electronic discovery and risk management, our multidisciplinary professionals investigate situations where you suspect you have a problem. We understand your need for sensitive and time critical corporate investigations.

Develop expert solutions. Working with you or your outside counsel, we can help determine what happened, how much is at risk, who is involved, and what opportunities exist for recovery.

Through a fraud risk assessment, we can help you identify your most significant risk areas so they can be better managed and mitigated.

Specifically, we can help you:

• Investigate financial reporting and securities fraud
• Examine financial and source documents for fraud — including false reporting, manipulated records, forgery or electronic tampering
• Look into alleged fraud or illegal acts, including money laundering, gray market activity, embezzlement and corrupt acts that violate local law
• Structure regulatory compliance strategies
• Provide expert reports and testimony
• Conduct insolvency and bankruptcy fraud investigations
• Manage health care compliance reviews
• Analyze suspect vendor relationships or activities
• Probe suspect financial performance by a unit, subsidiary or joint venture
• Explore compromises of intellectual property and trade secrets

Dispute services

Whether you’re facing a dispute arising from a merger or acquisition, a bankruptcy valuation, a significant insurance claim or a large-scale litigation, we can help make a difference by helping you reach your potential.

Managing data. Calculating Loss. Our Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services professionals have wide-ranging experience helping corporations and their outside counsel manage and resolve complex financial disputes. Working with you or your counsel, we can develop calculations that may help you develop your litigation strategies.

Integrated services across Industries. Our experience spans global industries, including the manufacturing and retail sectors, financial services, health sciences and the energy industry. We work with a broad international network to gather and evaluate evidence as we work with outside and corporate counsel to determine damages.

We assist in disputes related to:

• Contracts
• Transactions
• Accounting malpractice
• Ownership
• Valuation matters
• Antitrust
• Product liability
• Class actions
• Construction claims
• Regulatory-based claims
• Arbitrations
• Intellectual property
• Insurance claims

Forensic technology and discovery services

Large, complex disputes and investigations involve volumes of electronic documents, email and other forms of data. Mitigating the risks and managing the costs inherent in locating, preserving, collecting, reviewing and producing electronic data are top-of-mind activities for many in-house and external counsel. Managing the process can be a daunting task.

Find the "hot docs". Today, electronic information is found in huge volumes, in many locations and on many different devices. Our Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services professionals help locate and analyze those data.

Evaluate what you have. Our team compiles evidence into a database searchable by investigators and lawyers around the world. We also maintain the data and assist in constructing searches to help you find what you need when you need it.

Reconstruct data to investigate claims. Data mining is invaluable in establishing what happened and whether anything is amiss. Our professionals have years of experience in doing just that.

Specifically, we can:

• Create a plan for and manage the process of preserving hard drives, tapes and digital evidence in accordance with legal guidelines and rules of evidence
• Find and collect electronic data wherever it may be
• Analyze the evidence to locate, identify and extract information of evidentiary value to the investigation or conflict

Anti-fraud services

Regulations such as the US Federal Sentencing Guidelines, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and the SEC’s guidance on internal control over financial reporting and anticorruption legislation require companies to be much more vigilant in their efforts to prevent and detect fraud.

Benefits of a robust anti-fraud program. An anti-fraud program can help you structure your fraud risk management by assessing each element of your anti-fraud model, identifying opportunities for improvement, providing a process for implementing the improvements and helping your company understand how to monitor the effectiveness of the program going forward.

We can help you establish a robust anti-fraud program that:

• Provides tangible evidence of a culture of integrity
• Helps prevent fraud and facilitate early detection
• Improves monitoring and training
• Limits unpleasant surprises that affect reputation, confidence, credibility and stock price

A practical approach. Our scalable anti-fraud program focuses on three main areas: setting the proper tone, proactive and reactive measures.

Corporate compliance

Centered on the principle that corporate compliance should be fully integrated into the organization, we help organizations design and implement compliance infrastructures, processes and controls to prevent and detect non-compliance, as well as enhance business performance.

Over the past few years, organizations have focused a lot of effort to design, implement and improve their governance, risk management, compliance, ethics and internal control systems.

Some executives are appropriately asking, “Is all of this work really working? Are we actually and factually delivering outcomes that really matter?”

We can assist you with:

• Risk assessment
• Design effectiveness
• Operative effectiveness
• Reporting

Insurance claims

From business interruption to product recalls, from property damage to special events and from employee theft to fidelity bonds, we assist policyholders with the processes of preparing and presenting complex insurance claims.

Dedicated professionals. The dedicated insurance claims professionals in our Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services practice have diverse backgrounds in claim accounting, engineering, crisis management, strategic planning, and insurance coverage.

Through proven methodologies we assist risk managers, controllers, chief financial officers and attorneys to effectively drive the claim development process, to expedite claim cash flow and to focus on running their business.

Integrated services. Even in the best circumstances, preparing and managing a complex insurance claim involves multiple steps. The task can prove both frustrating and time-consuming.

Our professionals understand this, and wherever appropriate, we stand ready to assist management with specific steps or with the entire claims process.

We help you with:

• Claim preparation
• Data collection and organization
• Loss measurement and analysis
• Strategic claim development
• Loss presentation and support
• Knowledge and data management
• Managing expectations
• Appraisals, arbitration & litigation

Government Contract Services

For more than 25 years, our Government Contracts Services (GCS) professionals have helped companies deal with the challenges and requirements that are part of doing business with the government.

GCS has long served the government contractor community by applying our deep knowledge of a broad range of federal contracting topics — the operation of FSS contracts, government pharmaceutical pricing, Cost Accounting Standards (CAS) compliance and Federal Acquisition Regulation Cost Principles — to the business strategies, objectives and needs of our clients.

We are often called on to help companies and their legal counsel when facing allegations of defective pricing, CAS noncompliance assertions and other claims and disputes. Our experienced GCS professionals stand ready to help you with all of your government contracting needs.