Forensic Accounting
The term 'forensic' means belonging to, used in, or suitable to courts of law. The forensic accountant applies a combination of accounting and investigative functions to the financial issues in a case to retell the events which transpired. Forensic accounting involves the recreation of a set of accounting financial records from the latent transaction documentation, whether internal to the organization, external, or computerized. Putting together the missing pieces of the financial puzzle involves both the art of dealing with people and the technical skills of an accountant.
Frequently, these skills are used to help recover a business process that has, due to some disaster or event, lost the underlying records pertaining to that process (e.g. accounting records lost in a fire).
Often, however, these skills are used to recreate documentation that has been altered or destroyed to conceal the true economic substance of a transaction or to deceive the user of the financial information. In these situations where fraud may be suspected, the retelling of the events that happened also involves evaluating the legitimacy of the latent transaction documentation - which also may have been altered. Tremendous experience with business processes, internal controls, and fraud factors is essential for success.
Our forensic accountants have years of experience with the operation of business processes and the underlying control and documentation requirements. This experience gives us a tremendous insight into the meaning of seemingly disconnected evidence, and tremendous leverage in retelling the events which transpired.