Fraud, Asset Tracing & Recovery Geneva

Be sure to join us for a 30-minute, early bird yoga session led by Jane Colston; a yoga accredited instructor.

Settle in and connect with your peers through a series of rotating roundtable discussions. This interactive, ice-breaking session will operate as a series of 25-minute Roundtable discussions — where the speakers and audience can switch tables thereafter for discussion on the other hot button issues. We will then hear from each of the Roundtable speakers as they provide us with a recap of key takeaways

Roundtables:

1. Fraudulent and Negligent Misrepresentation: A Comparative Analysis of the Fallibility of Memory, the Unreliability of Oral Evidence, and the Importance Which Judges Should Place on Contemporaneous Documents
    
2. Opportunities and Challenges in Fraud and Asset Recovery Matters in Light of the Policies of the New US Administration
    
3. Litigation Funders, Investigators and Asset Recovery Practitioners: Bringing the Fight to the Fraudsters and Recovering for Your Clients

Communicating and Connecting in a Digital World. We mainly “email or text the talk” and do less “face to face” and more “screen to screen”. Given we are lawyers/professionals who are used to writing the talk, we must be good at this right? Jane will in this interactive session discuss the often unknown problems with digital communications (e.g the use of a full stop or exclamation mark) and how we can by different behaviour build rapport and trust to avoid misunderstandings. To improve your leadership and team’s performance get ready to pick up your phones, understand (e.g your emojis, punctuation, your cc versus your bcc lines) and carry out an audit of your digital style.

Many schemes perpetrated by fraudsters constitute federal crimes, so international law enforcement agencies are often involved and utilized to aide in recovery. As such, it is important to consider the pros and cons of participating in investigations that will – or are – being conducted by criminal enforcement entities.

Join us in this session as our panelists discuss what can happen to fraudsters and victims when law enforcement is involved. Topics of discussion include:

• AML reporting considerations for parties that have been victims of fraud during litigation or settlement discussions that are aimed at recovering assets from parties responsible for the fraud
• Account freezing and forfeiture orders, restraint orders and other mechanisms under the Proceeds of Crime Act
• Advanced tracing and international tracking mechanisms
• Compensation orders vs. confiscation orders
• Assistance with assessing, organizing, and litigating civil and criminal asset forfeiture actions
• Remission and equitable restoration of assets and forfeited funds to victims

There is still a lot of uncertainty regarding the underlying substantive crypto claims relating to fraud, where there arguably remain more questions than answers. Unfortunately, for many fraud and asset recovery practitioners, they are not well understood and create a variety of issues and challenges.

Join us in this informative session as our panel of crypto experts offer detailed responses to many of the questions you want to know the answers to, such as:

• What does the future of crypto look like?
• What lessons have crypto natives and practitioners taken from the last 12 months?
• How can we combat fraudsters that are using blockchain to conceal their activity and evade detection?
• How do crypto fraudsters commonly seek to off-board fraudulently obtained crypto or fiat?
• What are their thoughts on international recognition of court orders in decentralised and borderless ecosystems?

Most fraud victims are concerned about how they can recover from the losses they have suffered, and there are often significant challenges when there are: frozen assets; assets subject to arbitration orders and matters with conflicting disclosure orders. These matters are compounded when the assets and orders involve certain EU, Ukranian and Russian jurisdictions.

When a high-value fraud involves a number of these jurisdictions, it becomes a very complex landscape within which fraud practitioners must navigate, and requires focus and consideration of conflicting regimes, class priorities, foreign substantive law, and an array of other foreign insolvency and fraud-related proceedings.

Bring your questions, as our experts address some of the most pressing and difficult challenges that confront fraud and asset recovery practitioners in complex matters that include these jurisdictions, such as:

• Challenges in selecting the right forum(s) and venue(s) to prevent delay, gain momentum and improve chances of asset recovery
• Issues with obtaining and serving orders against unknown individuals and organizations
• What can be done to overcome a lack of cooperation between attorneys and enforcement authorities in the affected jurisdictions
• Handling the different approaches taken to disclosure, discovery and un-freezing assets in Civil and Common Law jurisdictions

It is not uncommon for high net-worth individuals to conceal their wealth in complex holdings, trusts, and other methods of hiding those assets. To effectively identify and value assets that have not been disclosed – or are grossly undervalued, it is important to utilize the latest legal, forensic and investigative tools to trace, trap and repatriate those hidden assets.

Some of the challenges, tools and assets that will be discussed in this engaging session include:

• Hurdles to gathering evidence in multiple foreign jurisdictions
• How to obtain and serve freezing orders against
• Forum and Venue: Challenges in selecting and changing the “battlefield” to speed up the cases, gain momentum and improve chances of asset recovery
• How to effectively and ethically utilize forensic accounting and corporate intelligence for high stakes asset recovery investigations
• Creative use of provisional measures, pre-judgment remedies, and insolvency tools

Be sure to join us for a 30-minute, early bird yoga session led by Jane Colston; a yoga accredited instructor.

Join us as our panelists explore the domestic and international ramifications of the UK Act. Topics and questions for discussion include:

• Why does the new corporate offence matter for individual officers and organizations that are incorporated or located outside of the UK?
• Whose actions may lead to corporate criminal liability for fraud and other offences?
• What do “reasonable prevention procedures” look like?
  • Robust but proportionate?
  • Is liability triggered where the organisation is the intended victim of the associated person’s conduct?
• What will the approach be for international enforcement authorities as a result of the Act?
• Does the intention to benefit the business have to be the sole or dominant motivation for the fraud?
• Will the offence apply to UK organisations whose overseas employees or subsidiaries commit fraud abroad with no UK nexus, or is this a matter for law enforcement in the country concerned?

Knowing where data is kept and how to get to it is key to the recovery of digital assets. The landscape and shifting locations of these assets make it critical to have effective tools for interpreting the data and tracing the assets across the chain. However, the mission does not end with discovering the location of the assets; it is important to keep up with the technology in order to get to the data and interpret it quickly.

Be sure to join us in this session, as we examine:

• Best practices for tracing the data
• Ways to recover the data
• The advantages of “Interrogating” the data using Artificial Intelligence
• Court responses to evidence derived from AI and other technologies

In an asset recovery case, much of the most pertinent information lies outside the jurisdiction of the fraudster and the victim. In addition, the ability to retrieve data from a wide array of sources across borders — and in different languages — is critical.

Be sure to join us in this session as we will hear from practitioners and investigators who continue to be involved in some of the most impactful and high-profile criminal and civil matters. We will discuss anticipated and unanticipated developments in the fraud landscape and trace the steps that are needed to recover for your clients. Key topics for discussion:

• Best practices for improving communication and cooperation between practitioners — and enforcement authorities — in multiple jurisdictions
• The role of counsel and cross-border investigation firms in seeking pre-judgment remedies and litigation
• Evidence gathering and corporate intelligence
• Worldwide injunctive relief mechanisms

When considering the enforcement of freezing orders, many jurisdictions hold that a suspicion, fear or speculation of the dissipation — or movement — of assets is not sufficient. An existence of sophisticated financial structures, a history of proven dishonesty, avoiding paying a judgment debt and a failure to provide asset information in response to a court order will all be relevant, but still not determinative on their own.

Be sure to join us in this session as our panelists review the key considerations when seeking to enforce freezing orders, such as:

• What to do when there is a breach
• Considerations when a receiver has — or will be — been appointed
• Best practices for bringing proceedings for contempt
• Factors that courts will take into account when examining the risk of dissipation of assets

Most high-value fraud victims are concerned about how they can recover from the significant financial losses that they have suffered, and there is often a huge gap between orders of restitution and recovery of the actual amount lost or hidden. In many of these cases, there are significant barriers to being compensated — including insolvency, jurisdictional hurdles, evidentiary challenges, and difficulty in tracing assets.

Moreover, when a high-value fraud involves a number of jurisdictions, it becomes a very complex landscape within which fraud practitioners must navigate, and requires focus and consideration of conflicting regimes, class priorities, foreign substantive law, and an array of other foreign insolvency and fraud-related proceedings.

Bring your questions, as our experts address some of the most pressing and difficult challenges confronting fraud and asset recovery practitioners in complex matters, such as:

• Challenges in selecting the right forum(s) and venue(s) to prevent delay, gain momentum and improve chances of asset recovery
• Issues with obtaining and serving injunctive relief orders against unknown individuals and organizations
• What can be done to overcome a lack of cooperation between legal practitioners and enforcement authorities in the affected jurisdictions
• Navigating the different approaches taken to disclosure and discovery in Civil and Common Law jurisdictions