Practices

International Asset Tracing

Our expertise:

Our team includes specialists with experience in forensic investigative techniques, white-collar crime, and public and private law enforcement work.

Our lawyers are particularly skilled in international asset tracing - we have countered fraudulent activity through the appointment of receivers, liquidators and administrators in offshore jurisdictions including Belize, Panama and BVI. We have pursued the enforcement of judgments in non-treaty jurisdictions using comity and letters of request between courts and coordinated claims arising from contrived bankruptcies and other fraudulent steps resulting in the recovery of valuable real estate assets.

Key areas:

Our work includes:

• Anti-bribery and corruption: assisting in the development of compliance programmes and conducting compliance audits, representing clients in administrative and criminal proceedings and helping businesses to navigate the rules on lobbying, political donations and conflicts of interest
• Data investigations: managing all aspects of our clients’ data management and forensic investigations in fraud investigations and similar contentious contexts
• Fraud: advising on fraud investigations, coordinating asset recovering operations in multiple jurisdictions and advising clients on civil claims

Key highlights include advising:

Our areas of expertise include:

• Advising Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (in Special Liquidation) on all aspects of the Quinn family litigation and international recovery and asset tracing, (the single largest piece of commercial litigation in the history of the State) with international litigation in multiple jurisdictions
• Advising investors in the recovery of funds from Mr Breifne O'Brien who channelled them through what the Irish Commercial Court described as a 'ponzi type' scheme. A worldwide Mareva injunction was granted and subsequently judgment in the aggregate amount of €14.5 million. We continue to advise the investors in relation to the recovery of the judgments made through the realisation of Mr O’Brien’s assets in Ireland, England, France, Germany and Barbados
• We represented the Central Bank in the appointment of inspectors to investigate the affairs of Custom House Capital Limited under the MiFID (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive) Regulations Acting for Man Investments who were successful in a contested asset-freezing application arising from an alleged fraud perpetrated on an investor hedge fund by the promoter of a Cayman fund which was subsequently liquidated

The McCann FitzGerald Investigations Group is a proud member of the International Fraud Group.