What Is Corporate Investigations?
Is something wrong with your company? There are strange payments or missing money? Did someone steal inventory from your company? You've been hacked from someone, so you have a problem with work process? No matter what situation it is, you need to check every part of your company as soon as possible. You need to start a corporate investigation urgently at your company to protect your business.
What Is A Corporate Investigation?
The corporate investigation is for a company who wants to uncover wrongdoing committed by management, employees, or business associates. The research of corporations is very complex with high-stakes and requires careful planning and realisation. At the same time, you need to ensure the normal operation of your company so that you do not have any further losses in business.
Everything that concerns a business can be investigated and can be classified under the umbrella of corporate investigation.
After the investigation you will find out:
- What happened at your company,
- Who is responsible for that,
- Why did this happen,
- Is there any danger for your business?
Every investigation aims to find all relevant facts so that an organization can come to the best possible solution for what happened in a given situation and prevent similar situations from happening. A corporate investigation helps the company come to a conclusion about the violation of laws and regulations regarding the company's business.
What Can Be Included In Corporate Investigations?
There are many things that can be included in corporate investigations. Here is the list of the most usual types of fraud or illegal activity:
- Legal and Regulatory Violations
- Loss of data
- Sexual misconduct
- Money laundering
- Accounting violations and irregularities
- Intellectual property infringement
- Corruption
- Defamation
The common thing in these issues at a company are mistakes in authentication during processes at a company. Each of the authentication factors contains a set of elements that are used to authenticate the person's identity before granting access to a part of company, approving transaction requests between your company and your business associates, or signing a contract with another firm. But, even the most up-to-date ways of confirming authenticity are not perfect. Cryptographic keys, smart cards, and biometrics all have downfalls. The corporate research will help you to prevent mistakes in security of your business in the future and, it will show your clients and employees how safe you are and how seriously you take their privacy and security.
Different Types Of Corporate Investigations
Researchers and investigators can use different types of investigations:
- Undercover Investigation: An investigator can look into employee misconduct like theft, substance abuse, or harassment.
- Research Investigation: Investigators can research and conduct employee background checks.
- Financial Investigation: An investigator can carry out financial investigations to discover money laundering and other criminal activities.
- E-Discovery: Investigators can collect electronically stored information in order to find necessary evidence.
- Corruption Investigation: An investigator can find corporate fraud, illegal foreign exchange, and industrial espionage.
- Employee Interviews: Employee interviews are essential to every investigation. Often it is possible to find out who is responsible for fraud by asking the right questions to the right people.
How Corporate Investigations Help Businesses
The company should initiate a corporate investigation to prevent wrongdoing, and to show employees, the board of directors, customers, and the authorities, how seriously they take this problem. The corporate research will help the company to identify key individuals, discharge them, and provide information from an investigation to the board or even to the authorities, so the company can save their reputation, restore integrity and return to work.