Course overview
Fraud allegations demand more than a suspicious transaction or an audit exception. Investigators must establish facts, preserve admissible evidence, test competing explanations, quantify losses and communicate findings without prejudicing disciplinary, civil or criminal proceedings. Weak case scoping, poor evidence handling and unstructured interviews can turn a valid concern into an unproven allegation, expose the employer to legal challenge and allow control failures to continue.
This course teaches the forensic auditing and investigation methods used to examine suspected occupational fraud, corruption, procurement irregularities, financial statement manipulation and misappropriation of assets. Participants learn to scope allegations, develop investigation hypotheses, plan evidence collection, analyse accounting records and digital data, conduct fact-finding interviews, document findings and recommend corrective controls. The course also addresses confidentiality, legal boundaries, chain of custody, privilege considerations and the distinction between investigative work and a statutory financial audit.
Teaching combines short technical briefings with realistic cases involving false vendors, expense fraud, payroll manipulation, bribery indicators and revenue misstatement. Participants work with investigation plans, transaction extracts, evidence logs, interview records and report structures. They progressively build an investigation case file, culminating in a reviewed and presented forensic audit report package containing an allegation assessment, evidence plan, analytical findings, loss calculation and control recommendations.
The course suits finance, audit, compliance, risk, legal and investigative professionals who may lead, support, commission or review fraud investigations. It is particularly relevant for organisations handling public funds, regulated financial services, donor-funded programmes, complex procurement or decentralised operations.
