An extract from the 2021 edition of Americas Investigations Review. The whole publication is available at https://globalinvestigationsreview.com/edition/1001545/americas-investigations-review-2021
In “Moving Forward after an Investigation,” a chapter from GIR’s The Americas Investigations Review, Frances McLeod, Jenna Voss and Umair Nadeem, provide practical suggestions for ensuring a strong control environment post-investigation and suggest best practices that companies should consider to ensure they are well-positioned to detect and investigate future fraudulent or non-compliant behaviour. They also highlight how companies need to consider the unique challenges the covid-19 pandemic presents.
In their chapter, they’ll review:
- Covid-19 may have limited some companies’ opportunity to, or prioritisation of, conducting effective root cause analysis or risk assessments
- Economic downturns may increase an organisation’s exposure to fraud and misconduct, and short-term cost savings eventually create gaps within the overall compliance programme, which can result in investigations
- Companies should not take the approach that the current business environment is only ‘temporary’ and should ensure effective remediation of all identified vulnerabilities
- Recent international public scandals demonstrate the need for companies to continue to evaluate the effectiveness of their reporting and investigations channels, especially in the aftermath of an investigation
- Multinational organisations must be able to evaluate and understand how cultural drivers shape attitudes toward compliance across global locations
Read the whole publication here.
