BOOK
REVIEW
The Alchemists: Inside
the Secret World of
Central Bankers
By Neil Irwin (Business Plus, 2013)
W
RRP: £25 (£17.50 from amazon.co.uk)
if a particular file was never saved or it was
deleted shortly after it was created, it may
still be retained on multiple backup media.
Most files usually contain metadata – additional data about the original data that
can provide the investigator with important
relevant information. When files and messages are saved, modified or sent, computer
software automatically creates artifacts or
metadata. Normally this information cannot
be changed. Most times, metadata includes
information about the date the document
was created, who created the data, when it
was modified, etc. Metadata can be as revealing as a fingerprint, thus forming important e-evidence to be used in court.
When the Enron Corporation declared
bankruptcy in December 2001, much of the
subsequent investigation relied on computer
files and their metadata as evidence. A specialized team of forensic accountants, computer forensic experts and lawyers searched
hundreds of Enron employees’ computers
and were able to find important e-evidence
that was later used in court.
E-evidence can prove intent and is hard to
deny. However, there are certain aspects that
need to be taken into consideration when
dealing with a computer investigation:
Computer forensic investigations can be
very costly because specialized skills and
software may be needed in order to properly retrieve relevant information without
changing or damaging it.
It is an area that is constantly evolving.
Recently, programmers have begun to
design anti-forensic tools to make it harder
to retrieve information during an investigation.
We are now experiencing a shift from
desktop computers to handheld devices
(e.g. mobile phones) and additional technical knowledge is needed to retrieve information from these devices.
The Achilles heel of e-evidence is that
lawyers and judges involved in a case may
not always understand the accounting
and technical details of the case and, as a
result, may not appreciate the relevance of
e-evidence without the help of a forensic
accountant and/or a computer forensic
expert.
hen the first rumblings
of the coming financial
crisis were heard in
August 2007, three
unelected men
suddenly became the most powerful
in the world. They were the leaders
of the world’s three most important
central banks: Ben Bernanke (US
Federal Reserve), Mervyn King (Bank
of England), and Jean-Claude Trichet
(European Central Bank). Over the next
five years, they and their fellow central
bankers deployed trillions of dollars,
pounds and euros to try and contain
the waves of panic that threatened to
bring down the global financial system.
His gripping account of the crisis and
the most intense exercise in economic
crisis management ever seen is the
truly global story of the central bankers’
role in the world economy. The book
breezes through central banking’s
troubled history but where Irwin really
provides spice, is in his blow-by-blow
account of the financial crisis and its
aftermath. Of the book’s three main
protagonists only Bernanke comes
out remotely well. These alchemists
may not have produced gold, but they
provided enough monetary glue to hold
societies together.
The importance of using computer forensic
techniques to uncover evidential matter
in a financial fraud investigation cannot
be understated. Electronic evidence is an
extremely fragile and often high-value form
of evidence that tends to be undetectable
to the human eye. Like other forms of trace
evidence, e-evidence must be collected, preserved and handled with care by professionals
who know how to gather and prepare it for
judicial cases. If the evidence is destroyed or
modified, the case could be lost in court.
info: Rakis Christoforou is certified in Financial Forensics and accredited in Business Valuation. He is a member of the AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public
Accountants – Forensic & Valuation Services section) and the ACFE (Association of Certified Fraud Examiners). He is also Vice-Chair of the Economic Crime &
Forensic Accounting Committee of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Cyprus (ICPAC).
the international investment, finance & professional services magazine of cyprus
Gold 71