Investigating Financial Crimes: A Comparative Study

This article provides a comparative study of the investigation process of financial crimes in UK, USA and internationally. It covers the basic steps, regulations and best practices followed in each country. The article also highlights the relationship between regulation and criminal justice, and the role of technology in making investigations more efficient. Expert insights from Desklib are included.

Running head: CRIMINAL LAW
Criminal Law
Name of the Student
Name of the University
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Investing Financial Crimes
United Kingdom
In UK, there is a process of investigating the financial crimes. It differs from country to
country. The investigation process involves a better regulation in United Kingdom. The concept
of working with better regulation involves making sure that there is engagement of transparency
throughout the process, the evidence provided must inform about the process of law-making and
the policy and lastly, to ensure that the stakeholders and citizens are engaged in the entire
process. The purpose of better regulation is to improve the quality of the EU policy and the law
making to ensure that the legislation serves the people in a better way with its effects. However,
for making an application for the financial investigation procedure engages the employee
embezzlement, corruption and other economic crimes against the entities. The first or the basic
approach to the financial investigation is the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners1. It has
been developed for performing the fraud examination. It is beneficial when the forensic
accountant has been retained to carry out an investigation within the entity. This model should be
altered for applying it to other kinds of financial investigations. In the process of investigation,
the steps include planning the assignment, carrying out the background investigations, examining
the significant documents, taking interviews of the witnesses, examining the facts and prepare
the report based on the information. Every source of information should be kept recorded for
further use. The financial statements must be reviewed based on the vertical analysis and
horizontal analysis. The bank statements plays a major role as well2. The process of investigation
will be done based on the jurisdiction of the law of United Kingdom.
1 Wall, David S. "The Internet as a conduit for criminal activity." (2015).
2 Greene, Karen Shalev, and Llian Alys. "Introduction." Missing Persons. Routledge, 2016. 21-26.

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USA
The best practice of the investigation process is to follow the basic steps for a solution.
There is a process of investigating financial crimes when the normal procedure is followed.
However, it can be stated that regulation and criminal justices share a relationship. The power to
make laws is therefore shared between the Commonwealth Parliament and the each State
Parliament. In USA, it has been observed that the investigating procedure of financial crimes is
complex and hence involves the plenty of law enforcement agencies. Thus, in relation to the
process of criminal justice, all the defendants are said to be presumed innocent until proven
guilty in a criminal court3. Hence, the process of investigation includes hundreds of victims. In
the process, the agent is usually made the principle contact. If the scenario states that the case is
accepted federally for prosecution, each attorney’s office of the United States should have a
victim witness program for serving it as the liaison throughout the process for answering the
questions in assisting the concerned victims. When the case is indicted, an individual will have
the right to information regarding the continuation status of a case. Right to information consists
of providing a victim impact statement and requesting restitution when the information is about
the release process of the defendant from prison4.
International
I The financial crime regulations and the law enforcement initiatives helps in adding to the
costs of the financial institutions by driving a need for the technology enabled controls and
3 Blakemore, Brian. Policing cyber hate, cyber threats and cyber terrorism. Routledge, 2016.
4 Ronczkowski, Michael R. Terrorism and organized hate crime: Intelligence gathering, analysis and investigations.
CRC press, 2017.

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compliance processes. The process of investigation is fertile ground for the process of
automation as it associates with a number of rule based and time-consuming tasks that does not
require the human oversight5. For making the investigations more efficient the duty of the
financial institutions should pursue a range of automation strategies involving the analysis, data
acquisition, investigator nudging and automated system health checks among others. In the
process of investigation, the basic step involves using open source information. There have been
plenty of examples from practice when the evidence of corruption was found through the
analysis of the information available. The major source of finding the information is through
internet and mass media. The information that is used with the help of electronic means must be
kept recorded. Thereafter, there should be a background check of the public officials. In the
procedure of investigation, proactive undercover techniques must be used. Cooperation should
be present with the witnesses for an outcome of a comprehensive approach. The investigation
team while dealing with the cries should make use of independent specialists and experts6.
However, a forensic accounting is used for investigating the corruption. It can be concluded
stating that dealing with the financial crimes internationally, the basic structure of the
investigation process is more or less similar.
5 Platt, Stephen. Criminal capital: How the finance industry facilitates crime. Springer, 2015.
6 Singh, Dalvinder. Banking regulation of UK and US financial markets. Routledge, 2016.

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References:
Blakemore, Brian. Policing cyber hate, cyber threats and cyber terrorism. Routledge, 2016.
Greene, Karen Shalev, and Llian Alys. "Introduction." Missing Persons. Routledge, 2016. 21-26.
Platt, Stephen. Criminal capital: How the finance industry facilitates crime. Springer, 2015.
Ronczkowski, Michael R. Terrorism and organized hate crime: Intelligence gathering, analysis
and investigations. CRC press, 2017.
Singh, Dalvinder. Banking regulation of UK and US financial markets. Routledge, 2016.
Wall, David S. "The Internet as a conduit for criminal activity." (2015).