The Lawyers Weekly - Forensic Accounting & Fraud, 2012

Another problem, he adds, is that an
MSA can get lost in bureaucracy when ne-
gotiating the agreement.

“Companies will sit on these master ser-
vice agreements and it will get shuffled off
to various desks for people to read. We
might not see the thing again until a real
need arises.”
Duschek says he can usually figure out
via a telephone interview with a compa-
ny official whether steps such as seizing
equipment or imposing site security need
to be taken and he doesn’t need to have
an MSA in place to get the ball rolling on
the investigation.
“Once we get the phone call we can,
through a fairly quick assessment, say what
we think the immediate need is, or we can
arrange to have a meeting the next morn-
ing to at least try to get a company through
the situation and turn around an engage-
ment letter extremely quickly.”
The best approach then, he says, is to
have face-to-face discussions on a continu-

WHEN EXECUTIVES AT A FIRM
suspect there’s a problem, they merely
want to pick up the phone and call some-
body to get an assessment, he says.
“They’re not looking for somebody to
jump in a car and drive over there and se-
cure assets. They’re really looking for an
opinion on what to do next.

“If people can be comfortable enough with
you to pick up the phone on a Sunday evening
at 8 p.m. when they just realized they’ve got a
problem, that’s what makes a difference.”
However, Henderson of PwC says that
with an MSA in place investigators can
hit the ground running. Because of the
agreement, they’ll also have a good han-
dle on the company’s IT structure and
who to call at the firm for assistance,
making the task of investigating much
easier.
Technology is an area that is compli-
cated and every system is different, he
says, so having direct knowledge of a
company’s IT ahead of time saves time
for forensic investigators.
“When you don’t have that pre-arrange-
ment and you walk in on day one and they
tell me they’re losing money and someone’s
been stealing hundreds of millions of dol-
lars and I say, ‘What’s your system?’ and
they say, ‘Well, we’d better get the IT guy
so he can explain everything to us,’ we
have to go through a process of under-
standing their system.”
Meanwhile, he says, if investigators are
probing a complaint of bribery of a foreign
official it helps if they have knowledge of
the technology used by the company and
are aware of portable devices like laptops
and cell phones that are used by the people
who may be involved.

Time is of the essence when dealing with
fraud, he says.

“The evidence could be dissipating while
negotiations are underway on a contract.”
ing basis — rather than a formal agreement
such as an MSA—so executives know
they can pick up the phone at any time of
the day or night to call him if they think
they need help.