Introducing CDH's Corporate and White Collar Investigations Services Offering

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Introducing CDH's Corporate and White Collar Investigations Services Offering

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Tendai Jangara: Hello everyone and welcome to CDH Conversations. Today we're excited to introduce our Corporate & White Collar Crime Investigations service offering, which falls in our Dispute Resolution practice. I am Tendai Jangara and I'm a director in Dispute Resolution dealing specifically with our corporate investigations and I'm going to allow my colleague to introduce himself.

Hilary Chapfuwa: Good afternoon, everyone. I am Hilary Chapfuwa. I am a forensic accountant in the Corporate & White Collar Investigations team.

Tendai Jangara: CDH has a long history of corporate investigations. We are here now as a team, that's been brought together to focus specifically on this service offering in response to the market, which has shown a great need for specific teams which deal with corporate issues that have to do with investigations, anti-money laundering, our e-discovery services.

So today we will go specifically into the services that we provide and we'll talk about how we come together as a team. CDH Corporate Investigations has a multidisciplinary team and the reason we have this team come together is because of the services that we provide. As a cross-border specialist team, we have investigators who are certified fraud examiners. At the global international higher standard, we have forensic accountants, Hilary being one of them. We have psychologists who have specialization in investigations and interviewing. We also have our legal experts and one of those being myself, where we deal specifically with the legal aspects which underpin our investigations.

So as we come together as a multidisciplinary team, our focus is on our corporate clients and making sure that we provide a service which is not only benchmarked at South African standards, but is also benchmarked at international standards. And the reason for this is that we provide a service where we're not looking only at our jurisdiction, but we are multi-jurisdictional. That means we're able to service our clients not only in South Africa, but across our borders in Africa and we can also deal with complex investigations which go overseas as well. So as we start and speak about our investigations, Hilary, I'm going to ask you to come in and just give us an oversight of the type of investigations that we deal with.

Hilary Chapfuwa: Thank you, Tendai. So in the Corporate & White Collar Investigations department, we deal with various types of investigations which include corporate and white color investigations, we also deal with forensic investigations and our team has experience in conducting high value and complex forensic investigations in both the private and the public sectors. Some of the processes that we undertake during our investigations includes among other things; interviewing witnesses and suspects.

Our approach in conducting our investigations is with the aim for resolution of the wrongdoing, and while identifying the perpetrators and ensuring that all evidence that is collected is admissible in a court of law or in various other forums.

Tendai Jangara: Great, thanks very much, Hilary. So, a big area that we look at is sanctions. We live in a time where sanction regimes are being rolled out depending on the political landscape that we're in and it is an important part of our investigations just to look and understand at what's happening with our sanctions and what's happening globally when it comes to that.

When we look at the area of anti-money laundering for example, which is multi-jurisdictional in its function, we need to know what happens with the people who are sanctioned and how to deal with that. We provide advice when it comes to those kind of areas as well.

Technology is a big part of any kind of business which runs in this day and age. We are well equipped to deal with digital forensics which means we can investigate using technology. We have the tools to conduct big data e-discovery projects as well, which is a big function that we provide to our clients. Any kind of data that we are provided with, whether it be local or international, is something that we can deal with specifically with the tools and technology that we have at CDH.

Another big part of what we look at is post investigation processes. Once an investigation has been conducted, we need to provide the follow-on service. And this takes the form of disciplinary hearings, civil recovery and criminal cases. So we are able to provide the guidance and the support that our clients require to ensure that post investigation, the sanctions that need to follow can then take place with our guidance and with our leading. So again with our multidisciplinary team and being part of the dispute resolution practice, we can then lead on with our colleagues to any type of litigation that needs to be taken on and work with our employment department for any disciplinary processes that need to come in as well.

So Hilary, a big part of what we also provide is business intelligence. Can you take us through and give us an understanding of what we provide in this area?

Hilary Chapfuwa: Yes, Tendai. So we do offer a business intelligence service offering and this includes forensic due diligence. Before an organization or an entity engages another party, be it in a transaction or in whatever aspect of business that they are going through, it is very important to get an understanding of that other party that you will be involved in. So we come in as forensic experts, we help you to understand the other party that you'll be dealing with. This is from the understanding of the owners of that other entity, examining their assets so that you can be able to manage, be it reputational risk, financial risk and even protracted litigation that might come after you have engaged with a particular entity.

Among other things that we do in our business intelligence offering, we also perform lifestyle audits. So this is a very important tool that we found out being used for a very long time, be it with your employees to manage that risk. Sometimes you can just identify that some of your employees are living beyond their means and by performing lifestyle audits. This will help you identify the sources of the income. Is the source of their lifestyle, of the income that they are finding the lifestyle. is it legitimate? Or there is a risk that your employees are having association with unwanted or unpleasant entities or organizations or people, where they are getting this income to fund their lifestyles.

Part of the business intelligence offering as well is asset tracing and recovery. Sometimes businesses and entities are involved in disputes and you will find out that the other party will maybe try to hide their assets so that they are not exposed to that risk of losing their assets. We assist as well in tracing the assets and recovering those assets, just to identify so that when you get into the process of litigation you are well aware what the other party has. Tendai, that's our business intelligence offering.

Tendai Jangara: Leading on from that, we also look at the proactive side of dealing with fraud, corruption and preventing these from happening in the organization. We come into our client's environments and look at their business processes to ensure that the risk of fraud, bribery, corruption and money laundering are minimized. So how we do this is after having done an assessment of the business processes, we then put in the governance structures that are necessary to ensure that again, that risk is minimized. It's an understanding of the business of our clients, understanding the people who are in the business; the employees, the roles that they play, and then putting in the structures and the frameworks that ensure that every person in the organization understands the risk of fraud and also what it means, and the consequences of engaging in such activities.

We provide fraud risk management services. We provide anti-bribery and anti-corruption services and we also provide anti-money laundering structures and frameworks. In this time as we sit in South Africa with the understanding of grey listing, it is very important to understand how to manage the risk of these kind of illegal financial crimes and how to prevent them from happening in organizations. That's a big part of what we offer proactively for our clients to be able to manage their risk.

In addition to this, we come into environments and we provide training for employees to ensure that there is not only a system in place or framework but that employees actually understand how to deal with the policies that we assist our clients to put in place and how to actually implement them so that the effects of the frameworks can be seen in the minimizing again of fraud, corruption and money laundering. So these are the tools that we provide our clients with, from a proactive side.

In summary, we are a dynamic multi disciplinary team and CDH has understood the importance of dealing with fraud, corruption and money laundering, as well as other financial crimes in South Africa but we understand that our clients are not just confined to the borders of South Africa. We have a cross border function as well. We're equipped to deal with our network of service providers who are skilled like us and we are well positioned to provide our clients with services when it comes to investigations, business intelligence and the proactive side of managing any kind of risk when it comes to fraud and any kind of financial crime.
So we look forward to engaging with you. Please give us a call, get in touch with us and let us come into environments and provide the services that we do as the Corporate Investigations & White Collar Crime service offering. Thank you.