Identifying Conflicts of Interest From the Outside-In

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Identifying Conflicts of Interest From the Outside-In

Imagine that a large multinational company in China is suspected of engaging in collusive activity between salespeople and distributors, and the allegations involve potentially thousands of entities and millions of transactions. The company needs a way to rapidly identify potential trouble spots where they can launch a detailed investigation.

According to Allanna Rigby, director of Control Risks Group, conflicts of interest, like the case described above, are quite hard to detect. At the 2019 ACFE Fraud Conference Asia-Pacific, she told attendees that cultural nuances make conflict-of-interest investigations even more difficult.

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Navigating Stormy Seas: How Can You Anticipate the Unexpected in Investigations?

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Navigating Stormy Seas: How Can You Anticipate the Unexpected in Investigations?

Investigations are pivotal to fraud examination. Though fraud examiners prepare as much as they can before launching an investigation, CFEs understand that things are unlikely to go exactly as planned — new evidence arises and interviews yield surprising discoveries. CFEs also often must navigate difficult personalities, change their expectations for the scope of work, deal with organization restructuring and more that they cannot readily anticipate.

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"Billion-Dollar Whale" Author Recounts the Collapse of 1MDB

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"Billion-Dollar Whale" Author Recounts the Collapse of 1MDB

Best-selling author Tom Wright’s address at the 2019 ACFE Fraud Conference Asia-Pacific began and ended with one central figure in the 1MDB corruption scandal: Paris Hilton. I kid. But, Hilton’s name did come up several times while Wright recounted the events that led to the ousting of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and the exposure of a billion-dollar corruption scheme known as 1MDB.

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Best-Selling Author of "Billion-Dollar Whale" Says It Is “Unlikely” That Singapore and Hong Kong Will Take Meaningful Action Against Fraud

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Best-Selling Author of "Billion-Dollar Whale" Says It Is “Unlikely” That Singapore and Hong Kong Will Take Meaningful Action Against Fraud

Although the 1MDB scandal first came to light in 2015, the effects are still being felt in the Asia-Pacific region today. “It’s become clear that banks and other financial firms in Singapore and Hong Kong are facilitators of fraud,” said best-selling author Tom Wright. “Singapore took action to jail some bankers, but Hong Kong has yet to act. Both places will have to take further action to ensure bad actors don’t continue to operate on their soil, but this is unlikely.”

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Unexpected Sources: A Friend of Journalists and Fraud Examiners Alike

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Unexpected Sources: A Friend of Journalists and Fraud Examiners Alike

Fraud examiners might not always think of themselves as journalists, but there might be more overlap than you think. Both professions conduct interviews, they investigate documents, they write up their findings and, if they’re lucky, they can find unexpected breaks in cases or stories thanks to whistleblowers or unexpected sources. In her remarks to attendees at the 2018 ACFE Fraud Conference Asia-Pacific, veteran reporter Kate McClymont stressed the importance of those that come forward to blow the whistle.

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5 Tips for Navigating the Digital Crime Scene

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5 Tips for Navigating the Digital Crime Scene

“As fraud investigators, CFEs, financial crime investigators, you have got a big responsibility,” Dr. Graeme Edwards, CFE, AAICD, Director of CYBERi Pty Ltd, told attendees at the 2018 Fraud Conference Asia-Pacific. He was referring to the fraud examiner’s responsibility to know the right procedures to document and preserve evidence so that it is permissible in court, specifically when dealing with volatile digital evidence. In his session, “Navigating the Digital Crime Scene,” Dr. Edwards provided applicable, real-life advice on how a digital crime scene should be processed and worked.

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The Most Compromised Element in the Chain of a Cyber Scenario is You

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The Most Compromised Element in the Chain of a Cyber Scenario is You

What is the top risk facing the cybersecurity of our organizations, agencies and governments? Hackers from Russia? North Korea? China? Nope. It’s you and me. “It’s really easy to read humans and also really easy to manipulate humans,” said Ian Yip, CTO at McAfee Asia-Pacific. “No matter what you hear from me in terms of all the technology and the hacking and the Dark Web, it is still the human that is usually the most compromised element in the chain of a cyber scenario. It’s the human that we are most worried about.”

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