Siobhain Egan has had her comments published in Global Investigations Review (GIR) on a statement made by the Director of the SFO on corporate internal investigations.
She comments:
It shows that the authorities are looking at city firms with suspicion. I’m not surprised by the NCA’s comments because they’ve made money laundering an enforcement priority. That means looking at how people move money to offshore accounts and the firms that help them do it. The question is do the UK authorities have the budget to chase city firms that help individuals launder the proceeds of crime?
David Green is absolutely right to point out problems with internal investigators. If you hire a law firm to carry out an internal investigation there are always going to be problems such as client privilege, and the evidence has to be independently tested at every stage. It has to be sufficiently robust to withstand scrutiny. The problem is that the firms conducting these investigations have little idea of the requirements needed to satisfy a prosecutor.
