As a Certified Fraud Examiner, I am heavily involved in the debate of how the growing problem of Fraud can be tackled.
There was an article on Radio 4 on the You and Yours programme (Thursday 12th August 2010) where the issue of certain private organisation, mainly from the insurance industry, were paying the police to carry out fraud investigations. The article was introduced with an interview with Dr Bernard Herdan from the NFA. Nick made a good case for private funding of police investigation as possibly the way forward.
In principle, I am with the NFA on this, in so much as those that can afford to pay for investigations should be allowed to do so. However, I recognise that there is a danger of a two tier police service and that you cannot have a situation where the police give preference to those that can afford it over those that can.
I believe, the solution is simple, because the problem is not about who pays and who carries out the investigation – I and fellow CFEs, as non-police investigators, are perfectly capable of putting a criminal fraud case together - but access to the criminal justice system.
I propose there are a number of ways this could be achieved;
The police accept paid-for fraud investigations which they contract out. This is not unusual, as some forces are already contracting out some routine aspects of investigations, and I myself am a contracted investigator to a government statutory body. There would be oversight of any investigation in the normal way by police management and the file can be put before the CPS in the normal way. The police would cover all their costs for contracting out by a contribution from the ‘instructing’ organisation. There would be minimal impact on the resources for dealing with other crimes involving victim who could not afford to pay.
The other alternative is to allow those of us in fraud investigation private practice to prepare cases for submission to CPS. This is system that works well in the United States. As civil recovery is often the priority of the ‘client’ the criminal and civil investigations will run in parallel, with the criminal being given primacy if a ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ criminal conviction is likely.
The You and Yours programme included police representatives who talked about ‘debate’ and ‘governance’. While I agree there should be governance where civil contractors are concerned my experience of ‘debate’ (the licensing of investigators through the SIA is a case in point), is that nothing meaningful is concluded in any reasonable time. This is something that could be put into place quickly, based existing precedents and systems, and I think that the NFA are on the right track. The point is that we need to put a stop to fraud which is costing government and the man in the street billions of pounds, and it needs to happen now not sometime in the next 5-10 years
