Jurisdictions involved
The UK, US and several locations across Europe.
The business and background
The company is a multinational US-headquartered law firm with over 2,000 employees. Following the identification of irregularities within one of its London Partner’s travel expense claims, the Client engaged our Forensic Accounting & Investigations team to undertake a full investigation of the Subject’s expense claims.
What we did
We obtained access to the Client’s timesheet and expense recording systems, the Client’s account with an external business travel agent and the Subject’s email correspondence and calendar. Over the course of two years, the Subject had charged extensive travel and hotel expenses across Europe to multiple clients as “disbursements”. The Subject had written off some of these expenses (meaning that the Client had borne their cost) and invoiced some of the expenses to clients. Although the various sources were denominated in different currencies (USD, GBP, EUR and CHF), we combined all the sources to create a detailed timeline of expense claims, alongside the Subject’s timesheet and calendar entries.
The outcome
We identified that most of the travel expenses claimed by the Subject were not corroborated by the Subject’s time recordings or calendar entries as being legitimate business travel. We prepared a detailed note, which was used by the Client’s management to interview the Subject. The matter ended with the termination of the Subject’s employment.
Finally, we assisted the Client in calculating the reimbursements due to its clients for these travel expenses, as well as with submissions made to relevant legal authorities.