Why financial investigations are vital

Perpetrators frequently profit from their abuses – or to put it another way, their abuses are frequently collateral damage from profit seeking. Most perpetrators enjoy unrestricted access to international financial markets, trading partners as well as sophisticated financial and legal advisors. Even if perpetrators are prosecuted, the proceeds of their abuses are rarely impacted. Reparations for survivors are rarer still.

Existing accountability mechanisms can be slow, expensive and too often ineffective. Legal and non-legal approaches to redressing this issue are evolving. Targeting the ‘money trail’ of human rights abuses offers one such alternative approach. However, few justice organisations have the expertise or resources to probe the assets and financial activities of perpetrators, much less gather and analyse evidence and build cases with it.

FIND fills this gap by offering the same investigative expertise, cutting edge tools and methods relied upon by the most well-funded litigators and multinational companies at a cost accessible to civil society organisations. We work in the following four areas:

Information Gathering & Case Building

We gather information and evidence about the financial operations of perpetrators of crimes, and their networks.

This material is used by our partners in legal, quasi-legal and other accountability approaches such as strategic litigation, OECD complaints, regulatory action and public advocacy.

Asset Tracing

We identify assets belonging to individuals, companies and governments in order to support:

1) Legal efforts to secure reparations for survivors of international crimes. In the UK, it supports civil proceedings to secure compensation for survivors of human trafficking and forced labour.

2) Sanctions submissions in the context of tackling human rights violations and corruption.

Sectoral & Supply Chain Analysis

We identify and map the principal actors operating in a sector where there are human rights or environmental concerns. The analysis can focus on one or many jurisdictions depending on the nature of the market and supply chain and typically involves a commodity or technology such as palm oil or digital surveillance.

Our research and analysis supports our partners formulate their accountability strategies.

Training & Capacity Building

We develop and deliver training workshops for our partners to build their capacity in financial investigations.

Our training combines live workshops, an online library of reference materials and follow up with partners to advise on live matters.

Cat Suart, an experienced training and investigations consultant, lead FIND’s capacity building work.