Location of Missing and Concealed Assets
Location of concealed assets requires the ability to understand stakeholders’ various interests and rights, and the full range of options available for possible recovery by counsel. Every situation is different. Some are driven by fraudulent activities such as embezzlement, money-laundering, or other financial crime, while other cases may arise from suspected bankruptcy fraud or from a high-value or high-profile divorce proceedings.
However, all asset location situations require specific skills and abilities, including an ability to understand competing interests. The ability to work toward cooperation where appropriate and to maximize recovery for the party who has engaged our firm are critical to success in such endeavors. Recovery of missing assets requires participation of appropriately-skilled and -experienced counsel. Recovery efforts are best started early, and are best done with minimum publicity.
Forensic in nature, such financial investigations are designed to reveal, quantify, and help recover from some form of wrongdoing, in contrast to due diligence investigations, which are predominantly designed to avoid problems.
Areas requiring location of concealed assets include:
Financial Fraud
LUBRINCO possesses a high level of competence dealing with complex international financial fraud. We have been very successful in helping locate substantial assets hidden abroad. In an average year we are involved in efforts to locate for seizure more than $600 million in concealed or laundered assets.
White Collar Crime
The location of concealed assets is a key factor in an intelligent cost/benefit analysis of any collection effort. Once an inquiry reveals connections with a specific offshore jurisdiction or jurisdictions, it is vital that members of the investigative team are experienced in the methodology employed in the identified jurisdictions for the collection of evidence and related tasks.
Our expertise in the nuts and bolts of business operations, combined with our comprehensive experience in all aspects of corporate asset recovery, makes The LUBRINCO Group uniquely qualified to provide asset location services for recovering counsel.
LUBRINCO has the ability to conduct sophisticated ‘Means versus Ability’ testing, also referred to as ‘Reality Testing.’ We research and document the spending habits (ability) and compare that to the information on income and assets (means). If the ability exceeds the means, the individual has undisclosed assets or undisclosed income.
High-Value Divorce Proceedings
It is not uncommon in high-value divorces for assets to be systematically hidden. We have been instrumental in locating and helping counsel to recover substantial assets hidden during divorce proceedings. (Please see our article Location of Hidden Assets in Divorce Proceedings in the March 2000 issue of ÆGIS e-journal.)
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