William Christopher explains why he recommends pursuing perpetrators of fraud in civil courts
An economy facing an impending recession has resulted not only in increased levels of fraud, but also in greater incidents of fraud being discovered. If a company is the victim of fraud there are two ways to deal with it.
The first, and most obvious option is to report the fraud to the police. However, this should not be the option chosen by a victim wishing to recover the money lost.
Instead, the victim should pursue the perpetrators of fraud through the civil courts. A solicitor acting for a victim has a focus on preserving and recovering assets. The prosecuting criminal authority’s primary interest is in securing a conviction. Any consideration of compensation is very much a secondary consideration, if considered at all. A powerful legal arsenal in the civil courts can be used to discover where the victim’s assets have gone and get them back.
Effective remedy
4Eng Limited v Harper and Another, [2007] EWCH 7568 (Ch), [2008] Times, 23 June, illustrates how these remedies would have been more effective than reporting the fraud
