| By :
Mark Jenner
A Forensic Accountant is a person with not only accountancy skills, but is also able to present complex financial issues clearly to non accountants. This is because they are most usually utilised in disputes that end up with court hearings. They can be called upon to give their opinion to the court in the form of a report or by oral testimony. Often called expert witnesses, a forensic expert will usually work in two different areas. This is the financial investigation work preceding a trial and the actual hearing in court. The Expert Accountant is also an experienced fraud investigator. Using both accountancy knowledge and investigative skills, they will drill down into the financial and business aspects of any case that they are presented with. This could be in a number of different areas: 1. A divorce where one side has attempted to hide marital assets often requires a tracing or valuation exercise. The Forensic Accountant might be asked to trace assets that a husband has concealed or value a family business so that both parties can take their proper share. 2. A personal injury could involve the Forensic Accountant calculating how much a victim would have earned but for an accident - for the purposes of quantifying compensation payable by an insurance company. 3. A supplier might have defaulted on a contract and the claimant might ask the Forensic Accountant to calculate the resulting loss of profits. 4. A company might wish to sack an employee who has been defrauding their business - and need a forensic accountant to quantify and trace the losses. 5. In a criminal fraud trial the prosecution might want the Forensic Accountant to explain to the court how the fraudster was able to steal the money - or alternatively the fraudster might want to explain why the allegations are unfairly aimed at him! For many people, the thought of pages and pages of bank statements and other financial information is very daunting. A fraud can quite easily involve transactions between hundreds of different bank accounts. The task of the Forensic Accountant is to sift through all the information and produce a succinct report that is easy to understand. To simplify accounting information in this way it would be very easy for a Forensic Accountant to hoodwink the court, which is the reason why both sides will usually employ their own experts. However, the best expert witnesses are fully accredited by a number of august bodies, have years of unblemished experience behind them and are usually recommended highly by respected parties. To get the best out of such an expert it is a good idea to bring them in at the outset of any financial dispute. Often the task is to stop either going down the wrong route and incurring unecessary costs for the parties. Once the matter reaches the formal jurisdiction of the court, the Forensic Accountant's other skills will be called into play. Sometimes the expert witness will be interrogated by the opposition barister to find any flaws in their opinion. Sometimes where this is not possible the barrister will seek to undermine the expert's credibility by forceful questioning. Not only must the expert be able to respond in a way that assists the court to understand the complex issues, they must also withstand the barrage of sometimes unreasonable questions that are intended to weaken and even intimidate the expert.
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