Tailored investigations, forensic data collection and asset tracing can all help you respond to suspected fraud and get back what you’ve lost.

Take the strain out of contract breaches, international arbitrations and professional negligence claims. Our services extend all the way to intellectual property and partnership disputes, plus business and share valuations.

Build your case in a commercial dispute with in-depth assessments of share capital, assets and potential damages. Whether valuing a business or assessing the impact of misstatements in financial statements, we’ve got it covered.

Our experts can serve as monitoring trustees to ensure compliance with competition authority’s reporting requirements. This may form part of a merger clearance or market investigation.

We work closely with family lawyers, contentious trust lawyers, and/or probate lawyers on issues that arise in private client disputes, we provide expert accountancy reports on behalf of claimants, defendants, or as a single joint expert.

Our digital forensic services can overcome e-disclosure challenges in legal cases, ensure evidence matches regulatory requirements and provide expert witnesses.

We assist lawyers in quantifying personal injury and clinical negligence losses. In-house training courses can also enhance lawyers’ knowledge of loss calculations.

Our experts in financial forensic services have years of experience providing evidence in complex, high-value commercial disputes. We offer assistance both in the UK and internationally.

In total, we’ve carried out more than 200 investigations. Cases have involved false accounting, procurement fraud, theft, allegations of impropriety and treasury fraud.

Evelyn Partners is a founding member of CLA Global Limited (CLA Global), a market-leading, mid-market international accounting network of independent firms. CLA Global serves clients in over 100 countries, focusing on privately-owned international businesses and their owners. 

Through this global network and our breadth of experience, we offer a truly international service and can support your business if you are expanding overseas, moving into the UK or already operating internationally.

Our forensic services experts never work in siloes. Using an end-to-end approach, we’ll logically guide you from one step of the process to the next.

This stops important issues from falling through the cracks and is something that sets us apart from the crowd.

Our agile approach allows us to assist on cases both big and small. Our work goes all the way from large-scale corporate fraud cases to supporting lawyers with personal injury losses.

A forensic accountant is an expert accountant, who works on contentious matters that are likely to lead to legal proceedings, whether a tribunal or court case. Forensic accountants can support litigation by providing expert evidence and advice.

Many forensic accountants are also fraud investigators, supporting businesses to recover from instances of fraud.

Digital forensics works by identifying and analysing electronic data. When formatted correctly, this data can then be used to support legal cases in a court of law. The digital forensic services offered by Evelyn Partners can help recover, investigate and present electronic data.

Forensic auditing is a specialist service offered by experienced accountancy practices. A forensic audit examines the records of a company or individual to identify evidence that could support a legal case. It may bring to light financial statement fraud, conflicts of interest or other suspected corruption, for example.

Forensic accountants typically assist with historical events linked to a dispute or allegation of wrongdoing. Their forensic services can cover things like fraud, remedial accounting, and valuations of assets or lost earnings, for example in contractual disputes or divorce cases. 

Forensic accountants can provide a wide variety of services, such as:

• Preliminary case evaluation.
• Provision of an independent expert report for use in court.
• Assistance with complex financial disclosure requirements.
• Quantifying various scenarios or issues for mediation.
• Valuing a business, asset or shareholding under contentious circumstances.
• Reviewing a business for fraudulent activity.
• Quantifying lost earnings.
• Performing wide-ranging analysis of financial data, such as asset tracing and account restatement.

Forensic accounting solutions support a wide range of clients in the UK and overseas. Some examples include:

• People and entities in a shareholder dispute.
• People and entities suing another party for damages, for example for a breach of contract or warranty.
• People and entities involved with or accused of fraud, or impacted by the Proceeds of Crime Act.
• People and entities involved in or impacted by a professional negligence dispute.
• Individuals in a divorce proceeding who require an independent valuation of assets.
• People, entities and councils involved in a compulsory purchase order.

Forensic accountants can be engaged at any time, from a preliminary review to advise on potential outcomes to when a case is well established.

However, earlier engagement will allow us to provide more input into case management. For example, helping with understanding the merits of the claim with you and your solicitors, drafting of pleadings, disclosure requirements and quantum issues.   

Our forensic services team is regularly engaged in cases across the criminal, civil and family courts in the UK, and in various international commercial litigation forums. Cases involve various regulatory bodies and international competition authorities. 

Yes, our workstreams often have an international element. For example, our team has worked in jurisdictions including the UK, Channel Islands, US, Europe, Singapore, Brazil and India.

An expert witness provides an independent expert opinion, within their area of expertise, to assist a court in relation to disputed matters. An expert witness cannot act as an advocate. Their evidence on matters within their expertise is given more weight than evidence provided by witnesses that are a party to the proceedings.

It’s a good idea to contact a forensic accountant if you believe financial statements have been misstated. The forensic services team at Evelyn Partners has a range of specialisms. Depending on the nature of your concerns, we can:

• Perform investigations to identify whether fraud and/or error has caused a misstatement. We also have forensic technology experts who can ensure evidence is gathered and preserved in the manner required for any potential legal claim.
• Perform reviews of your financial statements to determine whether they were prepared in accordance with the relevant accounting standards. We have financial reporting experts in IFRS and UK GAAP, including each of the SORPs.
• Assist in considering whether there is a basis for an auditor negligence claim.
• Assist in determining restatements required in the financial statements.

Our disputes team works across a variety of cases, including:

• Loss of profit claims
• Breach of warranty cases
• Breach of contract cases
• Shareholder disputes
• International arbitration
• Providing preliminary advice in advance of litigation
• Professional negligence cases
• Financial reporting disputes
• Business valuations
• Claims for consequential losses
• Intellectual property disputes

We have provided our expertise in many areas of accounting (and/or the audit of that area), including IFRS and UK GAAP, across each of the SORPs. For example, we’ve provided expert opinion where:

• Assets have been fraudulently presented in the financial statements as being owned by the company when in fact they were not.
• There were significant unauthorised related party transactions which, had they been appropriately reflected in the financial statements, would have led to intervention by the board and losses avoided.
• Financial statements were drawn up using a going concern assumption when that assumption wasn’t valid.
• A company had overstated its assets using ‘cross firing’. This is where a business falsely records additional assets arising out of payments and receipts between related companies.