Practice area
Civil fraud, asset recovery and tracing
Following money and assets across borders, and building the evidence to a standard that survives the application it is made for.
What the work is#
Tracing, across borders and across ledgers
Following value through corporate structures, correspondent banking and public blockchains, and recording each step so that a stranger can re-derive it from the same sources. Where the trail runs on-chain, the ledger facts are separated from the attributions built on top of them.
Evidence built for the application it will support
A freezing application, a disclosure application and a pleading each need a different thing from the same underlying material. The gathering is designed backwards from the order sought, including the duty of full and frank disclosure that attaches to a without-notice application.
Structures, beneficial ownership and the people behind them
Registry work across multiple jurisdictions, reconciled into one entity-and-timeline picture rather than a bundle of national searches that do not agree with each other.
Method that will withstand being examined
The English courts have discharged worldwide freezing orders over how the underlying investigation was conducted, and have refused to disturb privilege over investigator communications. How the evidence was obtained is part of the case, not a footnote to it.
Who instructs this#
- Litigation partners building or resisting an application
- In-house counsel and general counsel before a matter is externalised
- Insolvency practitioners and administrators pursuing recoveries
- Companies that have found a problem and need it scoped before deciding what to do
What you end up holding#
- A findings memo, written to be read by someone who was not in the room
- An entity-and-timeline map reconciling every source relied on
- A source pack in which every assertion carries its provenance
- Where instructed, a report in the form the receiving body expects
Evidence the practice has done this#
The practice's case-studies dossier works fifteen public matters and four clearly-labelled anonymised composites, read for what the evidence delivered and what it would have delivered if run earlier. The civil-fraud sections cover Autonomy, Wirecard, NMC Health, Steinhoff, Nigeria v P&ID, Stati v Kazakhstan, Glencore, 1MDB, Parmalat, Hin Leong, Mozambique v Privinvest and Cum-Ex.
Every figure in it was checked against the primary judgment or the regulator's own release, with a second independent check on anything flagged.
- →Civil & corporate fraud — in litigation
- →Civil fraud — resolved in arbitration
- →Concealment & subterfuge
- →Money laundering, bribery & tax fraud
Where to look yourself#
The official sources this work runs on. All free, all published by the body that made the record.
Every engagement begins with a discussion
Scope, people and approach are set once the matter is known, and put in writing before any work starts. The first conversation is free.
probative.io is a research and investigations practice, not a law firm, and does not provide legal advice. This page describes the work the practice does and the sources it uses. It states no view on any particular matter, and nothing here should be read as advice on one.