When financial institutions grow, corruption cases and legal violations may well spring up from the many employees working in the company. The surge of new communication channels such as encrypted chat apps like WhatsApp also provides a new avenue for orchestrating bribery and other activities that breach established regulatory and legal protocols being followed by the company
But with these new channels, reporting crimes inside the workplace has become more efficient as well. Relevant individuals can get an encrypted chat, a text message, or a direct report from an employee that describes suspicious activity among the other workers. As such, the allegations would need to be investigated appropriately to ascertain whether there are any violations and illegal activities being conducted in the business.
To handle any complaints or allegations of bribery or corruption that may occur, financial institutions should have and rely on detailed written procedures.
- Opening and categorizing the case
Opening and categorizing the case is the first step to classify a compliance violation. Relevant individuals will need to be notified, including those on the investigation team, and any senior management members subject to notification protocols. After notification, the investigation team will need to be assembled for preliminary meetings and assessments, within one to three days after compliance receives notification of the allegation.
- Planning the investigation
Determining the required investigation tasks is the next step after assembling the investigation team. Planning the probe begins with reviewing documents, interviewing personnel, and determining if it is necessary to copy essential materials, soft copies of papers, and analyze relationships, especially those in archived messages through relationship analytics. Should international travel be needed in the investigation, it will need to be planned at this step.
Once planned out, the tasks will need to be integrated into a written work plan to ensure that the entire investigation process is properly documented as it goes forward. Should there be any variations in the written investigation plan, they should still be recorded to explain as to why such a variation exists.
The planning should only take one to three working days.
- Executing the investigation plan
Appropriate steps should be taken to inform the interviewees, whether they are the ones at fault or not, that whoever will interview them represents the company and no one else. Attorney-client privileges and attorney work product ruminations will also have to be preserved. This step should only take one or two weeks.
- Determining appropriate follow-up
The preliminary investigation should be over by this step, letting you conduct the final phases. Should the allegation be narrow and specific, and the investigation produces a compelling explanation on the conduct of the alleged, the investigation is complete. The investigation team and the relevant business can convene and decide on the appropriate steps and decisions to make. This step should take under a week to complete.
- Closing the case
The company will need to communicate the results of the investigation to the stakeholders and complete the case report. The entire investigation process will need to be documented and stored, either electronically or physically. This step should be completed in under a week.
A multimillion-dollar international bribery scheme will need to be hidden by those committing them to ensure that they’ll pull it off without getting into trouble.
Investigators can use even social media content to help in their investigations when checking on the alleged party. Knowing which social media account to check may be challenging, but such knowledge can help investigators resolve cases quickly.
What comes first is archiving messages and capturing voice calls to ensure that your investigators can have easy access to the files necessary to the investigation if any illegal transactions were made through mobile phones via text messaging or WhatsApp. Any social media posts will also need to be identified beforehand to ensure that investigators would get to preserve the material they need.
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