Forensic Services

As globalisation progresses and the pace of business intensifies, companies frequently run into disputes and other difficulties. These challenges increasingly involve dealing across borders with customers, joint venture partnerships, and foreign governments. They may also involve trying to navigate different cultures and legal systems, as well as unfamiliar regulatory and accountability requirements.

Corporate crime also poses a real and substantial threat to business. Proper and timely measures are critical for preventing crimes or reacting quickly to wrongdoing. Fraud and theft involving everything from intellectual property to inventory, cyber crime to corruption, are multi-billion-dollar problems. Every organisation is vulnerable. Risk does not discriminate on the basis of geography or company size, industry or scope. The risks are real, widespread and disturbing.

PricewaterhouseCoopers Forensic Services practice provides financial, economic and statistical services to companies and their attorneys involved in litigation, arbitration, mediation and corporate investigation.

If this is your situation:

• You are in a business dispute involving complex and legal issues
• You have suffered a major loss and need assistance in quantifying your losses, including establishing and verifying the records needed to support loss calculations in negotiations with insurers and third parties
• You face financial or legal exposure related to the environmental impact of your operations
• You need an expert witness to provide objective opinions to the court
• You confront possible fraud in a joint venture or within your business
• You are vulnerable to regulatory review or investigation for non-compliance
• Your organisation is facing bribery and corruption claims
• You suspect that corruption or doubtful business practices have been committed within your company
• You need to know how to handle your electronic accounting and e-mail data files

How PwC can help you

Dispute Analysis & Litigation / Arbitration Support

PricewaterhouseCoopers Forensic Services practice combines global reach with dedicated local teams to provide relevant expertise and robust, fact-based counsel. The depth and breadth of our resources offer a pivotal advantage in investigating issues and problems that extend across borders and affect multinational organisations.

Our services include:

• Advice on general commercial, transaction-related, intellectual property, government contract and construction disputes
• Data mining
• Environmental dispute analysis
• Complex commercial litigation
• Expert witness services
• Arbitration support
• Insurance claims services
• Securities litigation

Corporate Investigations

We have accumulated extensive experience investigating economic crimes and eliminating the fall-out. The regional PricewaterhouseCoopers team comprises approximately 300 experts — auditors, analysts, lawyers, ex-regulators and law enforcement officers, IT specialists and fiscal inspectors — working in Europe, Russia, and CIS member countries.

Our experienced professionals are committed to providing swift, value-preserving intervention and preventative programmes for issues ranging from accounting irregularities to inventory or intellectual property theft, from cyber crime to corruption. We pursue a three-point strategy:

• Minimising business disruptions, financial losses, and reputation damage
• Identifying the perpetrators and uncovering actionable evidence
• Recommending and / or exercising effective remedial action to prevent future incidents

Our services include:

• Corporate investigations
• Fraud risk management — download a Russian supplement to Global Economic Crime Survey 2007
• Regulatory investigations
• Intellectual property
• Intellectual asset management
• Licensing management
• Cyber crime investigations
• Forensic technology solutions
• Electronic discovery (computer forensics)
• Anti-money laundering

Forensic Technology Solutions

With more than 90% of all business records now created and stored electronically, recovery and analysis of electronic data is an essential part of investigations and dispute resolution. PricewaterhouseCoopers Forensic Technology Solutions professionals are trained in the forensic acquisition and analysis of electronic evidence with the purpose of assisting investigations or legal proceedings. Using our proprietary tools and state-of-the-art, secure forensic technology laboratories (two in CEE), we provide clients with the best possible combination of traditional and technological investigative & analytical strategies.

Our services include:

• Computer forensics — preservation, capture and analysis of electronic evidence in the means by which findings may be admissible to a Court of law
• eDiscovery services — identification and preservation of electronic mail, electronic user files and hard copy documents, with processing and publication for searching and review
• Data analysis and mining — the identification, capture and subsequent interrogation of information technology systems to identify patterns, anomalies and transactions within the data which may assist larger, more complex engagements.