Confiscation Proceedings Case Study


The issue

A Government agency had made a Confiscation Proceedings application to confiscate over £400,000 of alleged proceeds of crime from a man who had been convicted of selling fake goods.  If the application was granted, it was likely that the man would lose his business and his home.

The problem

The man claimed that the vast majority of the funds he had used to support his lifestyle had come from a number of different legitimate sources but had kept no records to prove this. Forensic Accounting Services was instructed by the man’s lawyers to try to identify and explain the sources and amounts of income received.

What we did

In the absence of any financial records to support the man’s claims we set about trying to identify former employers, the nature of the work carried out, and the amounts received.  In so doing, at our request, the instructing lawyers obtained the services of a private investigator who pursued a number of enquiries on our behalf. We produced a confiscation proceedings report which set out details of the work the man had carried out over the previous six years. It included places and periods of work, witness statements from former employers, suppliers and customers, photographs, press cuttings and calculations of the likely amounts earned from legitimate sources.

The outcome

At Court, the man’s legal representative used our confiscation proceedings report as a basis for negotiations with the agency’s lawyers and was able to have the amount of the application reduced to £15,000.

For more information, or to arrange an initial meeting to discuss a specific issue, please contact us.