Financial investigation is an enquiry into the financial affairs related to criminal conduct. This includes tracing the money trail of proceeds from illicit activities, in order to make it less attractive and difficult for serious crime groups to carry out their operations.
Asset and financial investigations can help you determine the value 심부름센터 of a person or business’s assets, which is useful for due diligence purposes, personal injury cases, and debt collection. Investigators will follow the money trail, which can reveal hidden wealth such as property, cars, yachts, art, and more.
Asset Search
Asset investigations are a critical tool for many legal cases. The search can reveal a subject’s financial assets (such as vehicles, aircraft, real estate and money in bank accounts), as well as non-financial assets including personal property. This pre-litigation investigation is useful for a variety of legal matters including divorce, evictions, criminal investigations and debt collection.
Our experienced investigators can conduct a wide range of asset searches in the US and internationally, depending on the client’s needs. Typical searches include banking, savings, checking and investment account information, as well as credit reports. In addition, we can also verify and uncover non-financial assets such as vehicles, boats, personal property and evicted or abandoned properties.
A wide range of clients utilize our asset investigations, including attorneys, business investors, investment companies, government agencies and corruption investigators. Divorce proceedings frequently require these searches to determine if an individual is hiding assets, while creditors and debt collectors rely on them when a debtor claims that they have no money.
These investigations can be complicated and involve serving subpoenas to banks and other institutions to obtain account information, conducting interviews with witnesses and tracing money in order to find assets for judgment enforcement, debt recovery and legal disputes. Financial investigations also play a role in criminal enforcement by depriving criminals of the proceeds of their crimes, thus making crime less profitable.
Hidden Assets
Hidden assets are used by individuals and businesses for a variety of reasons. They can help companies maintain financial stability, allow investors to earn capital gains and improve company financial reporting. However, hiding assets can also result in violations of accounting standards and reduce trust in a business. In addition, it can make a company’s reputation vulnerable to attack and can lead to the loss of clients.
Detecting hidden assets is challenging, but there are a few ways that professionals can find them. They can review income tax returns, real estate and personal property taxes, bank and savings accounts, investment accounts, and email and text messages. Inconsistent deposits and withdrawals can reveal the existence of hidden accounts or accomplices. Uncashed traveler’s checks are another common way people hide cash.
In some cases, an individual may be trying to conceal assets in order to save money during a divorce or other legal proceeding. This can include items like art, antiques, collections, tools, and vehicles. Additionally, a person may try to hide cash by changing the beneficiary on a life insurance policy.
Detecting these types of issues requires strong investigative skills and an understanding of various laws and regulations regarding money laundering and asset recovery. Fortunately, investigators are able to use a variety of investigative techniques worldwide to trace assets and identify launderers. This includes the use of offshore centers, corporate vehicles, nominees, intermediaries and “straw men.”
Asset Recovery
A key element of financial investigations is identifying stolen assets and recovering them. This is usually done by tracing money laundering networks in drug cases or identifying assets acquired through corrupt business practices. Asset recovery requires significant resources, expertise and political will. However, it is a vital element of anti-corruption efforts as it deters corrupt behaviour by making it more costly for individuals to engage in bribery and other illegal activities.
To recover assets, victim countries need to first trace the stolen assets. This can be achieved by obtaining cooperation from authorities in jurisdictions where the assets reside through Mutual Legal Assistance requests (MLA) or civil proceedings such as letter rogatory. Once the assets are located, legal processes must be initiated in the requested country to confiscate them. The confiscated assets must then be returned to the victim country.
TI EU advocates for a clear, effective framework to facilitate the confiscation of illicitly obtained proceeds of corruption and their responsible repatriation to the states from which they originated. This is a crucial element of the fight against corruption and to ensure that the benefits of crime do not accrue to criminals, their family members and other close associates. This is a core issue addressed in the UN Convention against Corruption.
Debt Collection
Financial investigations are an essential tool for the fight against serious and organised crime, by depriving criminals of their illicit proceeds and assets. They also allow for confiscation of criminal property so that crime doesn’t pay. They are key to identifying and tracing illegally obtained funds and to combat money laundering, fraud, trafficking in drugs and human beings, counterfeiting, terrorism and other crimes.
Credit recovery
When a debtor refuses to pay, the creditor needs to know whether there is an availability of movable and immovable assets capable of satisfying the credit claim. This is what TIN’s patrimonial investigation for credit recovery service is about: it establishes the legitimacy of a debtor to pay and accelerates the legal procedure by targeted and sequential actions ranging from notifications to foreclosure acts.
As part of this service, TIN investigates the financial situation of a person or company by conducting an exhaustive search for assets, including tax records, alleged debt, shareholder statements, spending habits and other data sources. It is also possible to conduct searches for concealed property, such as inheritance rights and undeclared bank accounts. Our investigators can also check the legitimacy of a debtor’s declared wealth and the validity of the information provided in a declaration of wealth, and research liens, judgements and bankruptcy filings that could offset the value of the newly identified assets.