Following the success of our Asset Tracing & Investigations breakfast series in 2022, we returned in 2023 with a host of new topics to share detailed insight on and discuss with our clients and attendees.
Our first session of the year was "The Weakest Link - Understanding Fraud and Leakage in your Supply Chain," and focused on managing large third-party contracts, establishing robust internal controls, and how issues in a supply chain can be resolved.
In March, experts from our Turnaround & Restructuring practice presented "Steadying the Course: The Role of a Chief Restructuring Officer." This session set out how Ankura's experts are called into companies facing distressed situations. It explored how a Chief Restructuring Officer's holistic and multidisciplinary approach can provide the skill set needed to enhance corporate accountability, facilitate conflict resolution, and ultimately deliver crisis stabilisation.
Next on the calendar was "Money Laundering in the Art World," a detailed look into how and why the art and antiquities market has become such an attractive vehicle for fraudsters to launder money and commit crimes.
In June, experts from Ankura's Risk, Forensics, and Compliance team led a seminar on "Failure to Prevent Fraud." This session considered the implications of the proposed failure to prevent fraud offences and what that would mean for companies' compliance frameworks. Using the prosecution of Redcentric employees by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as a case study, we demonstrated how offences of false accounting took place at a company and why they were not picked up. We also discussed how companies might have to adjust their controls to demonstrate consideration of new legislation and avail themselves of the reasonable procedures defence should they need to.
We closed out the 2023 series with "A Russian Warship and a Message in a Bottle," a case study of a real-life bottle that washed up on a beach in Wales containing a message written in Russian. The message included a phone number that ultimately belonged to a serving Russian naval recruit, whose Instagram posts contained sensitive geolocation data on the Russian navy.
We will be continuing the series in 2024, starting with "Understanding AI-enabled fraud," alongside RPC. Ankura and RPC practitioners will discuss how AI is changing the fraud risk landscape, including using deepfakes and large language models. It will also cover how investigators and litigators can work together to help mitigate these risks.
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