White Collar Crime Defence & Investigations

Money Laundering

Money laundering is often marketed as a technical issue—a matter of unusual transactions, risk profiles, reporting, filters, checklists. As if it were a broken printer: replace one part and you can move on. But I’m telling you: anyone who looks at it that way has not understood the danger. Money laundering is, at its core, an attack on your organisation as an instrument. Your company isn’t merely “involved” in laundering; it is used, warped, turned into a stage on which money changes colour. And then the day comes when people look at you with a stare that says: you should have seen it. You should have smelled it. You should have recognised the patterns. The question put to you is rarely polite: why did you let this happen? And you can respond that you had reporting procedures, but procedures are paper if they don’t live. What matters is behaviour, decision-making, the reality behind the polished text.

I see how this unfolds when clients come to me: first there is the discovery—an “awkward” relationship, a customer who deals in a little too much cash, an intermediary who is a little too clever with routes and detours. You have been harmed because you were misled; you face reputational damage, financial damage, sometimes internal damage far greater than the money itself. But immediately something shifts under your feet: suspicion. Because in this changed world, “I didn’t know” is rarely a shield anymore. People ask: what signals were there? Who saw them? What was done with them? And if the answer is not sharp, not demonstrable, not traceable, your uncertainty becomes fuel for the case against you. Then you are not only the victim of non-conforming conduct—you become the suspect for negligence, or worse: facilitation. The leap from “misled” to “complicit” can be smaller than a single press release, and anyone who doubts that has never watched how quickly a narrative starts walking on its own.

That is why I am uncompromising in my approach. I don’t build a story to comfort you; I build a story to protect you. I want to see who knew what, when, and on what basis. I want to record how decisions were made, which controls were actually performed, which escalations were attempted, and where things broke down. Not to humiliate you, but to position you: as someone who responded, intervened, corrected—or, if that didn’t happen, as someone who takes back control now with an investigation that can withstand headwinds. I enforce evidentiary discipline because every detail you treat casually today will be picked up tomorrow and twisted against you. And I’ll tell you this too: there is hope, but it is not emotional; it is methodological. You do not save yourself with indignation. You save yourself with demonstrability—especially when you are both harmed and looked at as though you took part.

Terrorist Financing

Terrorist financing is the file in which the world has the least patience for nuance. The very word triggers a moral judgement that drowns everything else. And that is exactly why I warn you: this is not only about facts, but about reflexes. One transaction, one payment, one opaque third party, and a shadow forms that pulls you in—whether you are a victim or not. You say, “But I was misled.” The response is, “Perhaps—but why were you so vulnerable that you could be misled?” You can hear it already: the “should have” is ready, like a predator that stays awake waiting for you to show weakness. In this domain your position is doubly perilous: you can truly be harmed, and yet you will be treated as though your ignorance was a choice.

I have seen clients who were genuinely harmed: a supplier later revealed to be someone else, a charitable route that was exploited, an intermediary who chopped the truth into pieces and showed only the clean parts. You are not merely financially affected; you are existentially affected, because your organisation is suddenly associated with something you detest. And yet—and this is the paradox you must be able to endure—people can still accuse you of having done too little to prevent that deception. In a world where money moves at speed and networks hide behind layers of legitimacy, organisations are expected to professionalise suspicion. Not because it is pleasant, but because reality does not care about your intentions. The question is: was your system resilient to abuse? And if your answer cannot be convincingly substantiated, you become the story people latch onto.

My work begins by defusing the moral drama without denying the facts. I bring it back to control and traceability: what relationship was formed, which checks were done, what signals existed, what decisions were taken, what internal discussions took place, and—crucially—what interventions occurred once doubt arose. I create a record made not of fine words but of a chain of verifiable actions. And I am hard where I must be: if there are gaps, I name them, because otherwise you will be slaughtered later by someone who presents those gaps with theatrical outrage as proof of intent. Hope here is very concrete: the ability to show you did not look away, did not conceal, did not normalise. You do not need to be perfect; you need to act with demonstrable integrity when it matters—precisely because you can be both victim and accused.

Sanctions and Embargoes

Sanctions and embargoes are the stage on which the changing world shows itself in the most practical way: geopolitics walking straight into your invoices. What was a normal trading relationship yesterday can be a risk today that makes your organisation toxic in one blow. And the treachery is this: you can act in complete good faith and still end up in the crosshairs. Because sanctions regimes move. Because lists change. Because ownership structures conceal themselves behind holdings, trusts, nominees, mailbox companies, and names spelled just differently enough. The outside world then sees one thing: you did business, money moved, so you “should have” known. And there you stand with your documents, your processes, your people saying they truly tried—while you are looked at as though “trying” is an excuse. In this field, being harmed is often not enough; you must be able to prove you were not blind.

In these cases I recognise a pattern that is almost predictable: you are harmed by non-conforming conduct from a business partner or intermediary who deliberately pulls you into a grey zone. They present a clean story, a respectable counterparty, neat contracts—and meanwhile somewhere a sanctioned beneficiary sits in the background like a shadow behind the company. You become trapped in a structure you did not design. But listen carefully: once the facts surface, the question is not only who misled you. The question is also whether your due diligence was mature enough to detect deception. And if your answer consists of generic policy phrases rather than a concrete trail of performed checks and decisions, others will define your “maturity” for you—usually against you. Then you are not seen only as the injured party, but as part of the problem.

That is why I am relentlessly precise. I want timelines. I want sources. I want to demonstrate which sanctions lists were consulted, which screenings took place, how beneficial ownership was assessed, which escalations you made when something didn’t add up, and why you decided—if necessary—to stop or not to act. Not because I want to pin you down, but because I want to free you from the narrative others are eager to attach to you. I build an investigative approach that can withstand the cynical question: “Was this written after the fact?” I want you to be able to look forward and say: this is how we operate, this is how we intervene, this is how we learn. And yes, I offer hope, but it is a sober hope: in sanctions matters the winner is not the one who shouts loudest that they did nothing wrong, but the one who can best prove what they did do—especially when you are both harmed and placed under suspicion.

Fraud

Fraud is rarely a brazen robbery; it is more often a bank account drained slowly, disguised as routine. It begins with an exception that seems “practical,” a control that is skipped “because we’re busy,” a manager who says, “Just this once.” And you—you only see it once it is large enough to be impossible to ignore. Then it turns out there was a pattern, a trick, a system feeding on your trust and your haste. You are harmed, sometimes in a way that damages your organisation from within: teams lose trust, people become suspicious, the atmosphere turns cold. But precisely at that moment, when you are the victim, suspicion arrives too: how could this happen under your roof? Was there no internal control? No oversight? Did no one notice? It’s as if they say: you were not only robbed, you are guilty of having a door.

I often work with clients in this double position: first the blow of fraud, then the second blow of accusation—externally, sometimes internally. A former executive points at compliance. Compliance points at operations. Operations points at finance. Finance points at IT. Everyone has a folder; no one has responsibility. And then the outside world arrives, with no patience for your internal sociology. It wants one narrative, one clear line: what happened, who knew, what did you do about it? If you cannot answer that immediately and convincingly, it will be answered for you. By an opposing party. By a regulator. By an investigative firm with a client. By media hungry for simplicity. And then your complexity becomes a weakness and your victimhood a footnote.

That is why I force you back to the core: facts, proof, chains of action. I distinguish between what you thought, what you knew, what you could have known, and what you demonstrably did when signals emerged. I bring the grey zone under control by making it visible—not with panic, but with discipline. I look at governance, not as a slogan: who had which role, what reports existed, which indicators were seen, which warnings were ignored, and why? And I give you something you need to move forward: an approach that is not only defensive, but restorative. Fraud leaves scars; I make sure you do not live in permanent reflexive distrust, but that you become demonstrably stronger—so you do not fall into the same trap again, and so no one can frame you as the organisation that “looked away” while, in reality, you were the one harmed.

Bribery and Corruption

Bribery and corruption are the files in which a moral label is slapped on you fastest. One invitation, one “consultancy fee,” one intermediary who claims to “know the culture,” and the story is born: you bought influence. You may think this is about money; it is about power and appearance. And that appearance is exactly what the world today magnifies without mercy. Reality is often messier: you are approached, you are pressured, you are misled by an agent who presents themselves as indispensable. You can be the victim of non-conforming conduct—of a third party using your name, of an employee acting outside mandate, of a partner dragging you into a dirty game. But once it surfaces, the first question is rarely who misled you. The first question is: what benefit were you seeking? And if you are not prepared, insinuation becomes conclusion, and your status as the injured party is simply no longer heard.

I speak to you confrontationally because you need it: if you think these risks exist only in faraway countries, or only in “other companies,” you are not naïve—you are unprotected. Corruption adapts. Today it wears a neat suit, speaks legal language, hides in contracts, success fees, marketing budgets, sponsorships, “local facilitation,” and above all: plausible deniability. And when the matter breaks open, people stand there saying, “I knew nothing.” That may be true. It may also be carefully maintained blindness, a culture of not asking. And in a changing world where reputations collapse faster than you can convene a crisis meeting, not asking is a luxury you cannot afford—especially not if tomorrow you must prove you were the victim while today you are already treated as the perpetrator.

My approach is therefore hard and precise, but not hopeless. I do not investigate to put on a play; I investigate to save you from a narrative others are eager to pour over you. I examine decision-making: why was an intermediary chosen, which checks were done, how were payments approved, which documents were created, which deviations were tolerated, and—essentially—why? I build a defensible account that does not paint you as the cynical player people want you to be, but as an organisation that intervened once risks became visible, that has controls, interventions, documentation, learning. And if there were mistakes, I do not hide them in vague language; I place them in context, I correct them, I show what you are doing now to prevent repetition. Hope here is not “It will probably be fine.” Hope is: “You can prove you did not participate, did not look away, and did not cover up.” And believe me, in this field that is the difference between survival and being burned—especially when you are both harmed by non-conforming conduct and accused of it.

Tax Evasion and Tax Fraud

Tax cases are the domain where people pretend everything is simple: you should have filed, you should have paid, you should have understood what you signed. And when you say reality was more complex—international, fragmented, layered with advisers, structures, deadlines—you get that look that says: “Complexity is not an excuse.” Let me be clear with you: you must never use complexity as an excuse, but you must dare to name it as reality. Because it is precisely inside that complexity that people start sliding. First innocently, then creatively, then strategically, and in the end: criminally. It starts with a memo in which “optimization” sounds like a respectable word. With an adviser who reassures you: “This is fine.” With an internal function that sighs: “Everyone does this.” With a spreadsheet that delivers results that are just a little too smooth—and no one can still tell you which assumptions are buried inside it. And the poisonous part is this: you can be the victim of non-conforming conduct in that process—an adviser stretching boundaries, a finance function selling “optimization” as standard practice, a partner withholding data—and yet you are later looked at as if you were the architect of the whole scheme. Your name becomes the roof under which they shove everything they cannot immediately classify, and your intent is replaced by a suggestion that will later be presented as “logical.”

What I see in practice is that clients usually arrive with two flavours of fear. The first is substantive fear: what actually happened, how much is wrong, which amounts are disputed, which years, which entities? That fear is often manageable, because at least you know what you can investigate. The second fear is existential: who is going to tell this story? Because believe me, if you do not tell it—with evidentiary discipline, with traceability, with a coherent line—someone else will tell it for you. And that someone typically has an agenda: simplify the case into a caricature, cut out nuance, insinuate intent where sloppiness or deception played a role, and push you into the position of the person who “always already” knew. In a changing world where datasets are linked, signals are flagged faster, and files are increasingly less local, the tempo of suspicion is higher than the tempo of explanation. You fall behind the moment you assume you can calmly explain it later, because “later” in these cases is often the moment when someone else has already decided what “later” will mean.

That is why I frame tax cases the way they must be handled: as proof cases and narrative cases at the same time. I do not start with indignation; I start with reconstruction. Who supplied what information, who made which choices, which memos exist, which internal discussions took place, which risks were named—or deliberately pushed aside? I want to know where you were misled, where you were too trusting, where pressure sat, where shifting happened consciously, and above all: how that shifting is later inflated into a moral conclusion. And I will tell you this as well: I am not your court jester. If there are gaps in governance, in control, in oversight, I make them visible—not to break you, but to prevent someone else from later presenting them as proof of intent. Hope here lies in the possibility of dismantling the “should have” by showing what you did do, what you could reasonably have known, and how you now—on time—take back control. Note this: sometimes you are harmed by non-conforming conduct, and sometimes you are accused of that same non-conforming conduct; my work is to ensure you do not suffocate in that reversal, but to break its neck with facts.

Market Manipulation

Market manipulation is a term that instantly conjures a picture: someone pulling strings, steering prices, rigging the game, deceiving others. It is the perfect allegation for an era in which everyone suspects there is a hand behind every screen pushing harder than is visible. And that is exactly why this file is so dangerous: because it feels intuitively true in public—even when it is factually false. A price moves oddly, volume spikes, an order pattern looks “too neat,” and before you know it an interpretation begins repeating itself until it feels like truth. In these matters you can be harmed—by a trading counterparty, by an employee, by an algorithmic system configured incorrectly, by a third party abusing access—and still your organisation is immediately seen as the party that benefited. Suspicion sticks because the story is seductive: the clever player who “played” the market. And in that world, the line between “pattern” and “intent” is made dangerously small by people who mainly want a conclusion.

I often see the same paradox here that you now recognise: you are a victim of non-conforming conduct, and at the same time you are suspected of it. A trader acting outside mandate, a compliance line missing signals, an IT system failing to capture adequate logs, a communication that reads badly in hindsight—and suddenly there is a file in which your internal mess is converted into external intent. And in this changing world, market files are rarely “small” anymore. Data travels, regulators talk, patterns are detected by systems before you yourself understand what you are seeing. One chart with an odd spike can be enough to set the machinery in motion: questions, demands, searches, pressure. Then you hear it again: you should have prevented this. You should have detected this. You should have stopped this. And if you do not immediately produce a traceable reconstruction, the emptiness will be filled with assumptions—and in market narratives assumptions are more stubborn than facts, because assumptions are simpler.

My work then is this: destroy assumptions with facts. I do not allow you to be judged on insinuation, correlation, and convenient storylines. I want the order flows, the communication lines, the mandates, the supervision moments, the escalations. I want to know who had access to which systems, which signals were generated, who saw them, what was done with them, and where the chain broke—so responsibility is dictated not by you, but by the evidence. And I build a file in which you do not merely say you did not manipulate; you show how you acted when anomalies became visible—or, if it was too late, how you now restore with tight, auditable control. Hope here is discipline: the more technical the file, the more you can gain by stripping out drama and returning it to hard, testable events. Note this: sometimes you are harmed by non-conforming conduct, and sometimes you are accused of it; I make sure you do not get lost in that hall of mirrors, but force the exit with proof.

Collusion and Antitrust Violations

Collusion and antitrust violations are the files in which ordinary business conversations are suddenly read as suspicious theatre. Competitors meet at trade fairs, industry gatherings, dinners, coffee moments—it looks innocent until it no longer is. And then everything becomes loaded after the fact: “What did you mean by that sentence?” “Why were you at that table?” “Why did you email at that time?” The problem is not only what was said, but that people pour a meaning into your words afterward that you could not even have imagined at the time. In this domain, the world has changed: tolerance for informal “alignment” has shrunk, authorities’ appetite for information is greater, and contact is interpreted more strictly. You may be the victim of non-conforming conduct—a sales manager speaking too freely, a partner pulling you into a “normal” practice that turns out to be legally toxic, an industry culture that turns grey what should have been black-and-white—and still your organisation is addressed as if collusion were your strategy. The file is then written not in terms of “misunderstanding,” but in terms of “pattern.”

What I often see is organisations convincing themselves that antitrust is mainly a theoretical risk, something for large multinationals or movie cartels. But the real danger lives in the everyday: the exchange of information that is “useful,” the remark meant as a “joke,” the email that was “obviously not meant that way,” the spreadsheet that accidentally contains too much pricing detail. And when it goes wrong, the familiar mechanism begins: you are harmed because someone inside or outside your organisation crossed lines; you suffer reputational damage, you lose deals, you face investigation. But then comes the second front: the question of your own culture. Did you have policy? Training? Enforcement? Or was it a folder in SharePoint—nice to have, but nobody lives by it? If you cannot substantiate that, your silence is interpreted as permission, and “no evidence of enforcement” becomes, in practice, “evidence of tolerance.”

In such cases I build the defence the way it should be built: not only “we didn’t do it,” but “this is what actually happened, this is what we did do to prevent it, and this is how we intervened.” I reconstruct contact moments without panic, with context and proof. I want minutes, agendas, emails, chat logs, call data—not to make you sweat, but to let you breathe. Because when you control the facts, insinuation loses its grip. And I am sharp on one point: if something went wrong, you must not smooth it over with words; you must isolate it, limit it, correct it, and prove you understand the mechanism. Hope here is maturity: the ability to show you did not look away, that you knew the boundary, that you corrected, and that you are now an organisation that does not only want profit, but also control over its own behaviour. Note this: sometimes you are harmed by non-conforming conduct, and sometimes you are accused of it; I make visible where the incident ends and where the framing begins—so you are not convicted for the story others want to make of you.

Cybercrime and Data Breaches

Cybercrime and data breaches are the files in which victimhood is almost automatically treated as suspicious. You are attacked, you are hacked, data leaks out—and while you are still running incident response, the accusing finger appears: why were you so vulnerable? Why was your security not better? Why was that data there? Why was that access possible? In a changing world where digital attacks are routine and data functions as currency, “we are victims” is rarely the endpoint. It is the beginning of a second investigation: into your own conduct. And that is exactly where the deadly combination forms: you are harmed by the non-conforming conduct of criminals or malicious insiders, and at the same time you can be accused of falling short—or even of downplaying the scale, the timing, the causes. You feel the pressure: everything must be fast, everything must be perfect, and every word can later be used against you. And the irony is cruel: the more you try to reassure, the faster someone reads “minimisation.”

I see in practice how quickly this derails when control is missing. An organisation panics, teams talk past each other, IT speaks in technical terms, management speaks in soothing slogans, and compliance tries to impose order afterward on a chaos unfolding live. And meanwhile, logging happens—by systems, by attackers, by vendors, by regulators asking questions, by customers taking screenshots. Then comes the moment when your own emails, your own chats, your own internal updates become the evidence used against you: “They already knew.” “They played it down.” “They pretended.” Even if you acted in good faith, sloppy communication can create the impression that you had something to hide. You must understand: in cyber files, evidentiary discipline is not a luxury; it is survival. Not because you necessarily did something wrong, but because others will use every imperfection to push you from victim to culprit.

That is why I work here with a dual focus: technology and story, facts and governance. I want a clear timeline: what happened when, who discovered what, what steps were taken, which external parties were engaged, what decisions were made about containment, notification, communication. I look at access, logging, patching, segmentation, but also the human side: who dared to escalate, who was ignored, which risks had been named earlier, and what was done about them. I ensure your internal investigation does not become the next fire. And I offer you hope, but I make that hope hard: if you act quickly, in a controlled manner, and demonstrably, you can keep the victim narrative without it flipping into an allegation of negligence or deception. You do not need to be untouchable; you need to respond with demonstrable maturity. Note this: sometimes you are harmed by non-conforming conduct, and sometimes you are accused of it; I make sure your response does not become the second “offence” they try to pin on you, but the proof that you took back control when it mattered.