Follow the Trail

On May 31 2018, the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands found in favour of the liquidators of the defendant companies in the Islands’ longest ever trial in the matter of Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Brothers Company (AHAB) v Saad Investment Company Limited and Others. At 129 days, it is the Cayman Islands’ longest-running trial and one of the longest fraud trials ever litigated worldwide.

The Chief Justice found that, far from being a victim of fraud (as AHAB alleged), they had been complicit in a $330 billion Ponzi Scheme defrauding international lending since the early 1980s. The defendants’ collaboration with analytics and discovery partners, and their innovative use of technology, allowed them to uncover these practices in a vast and chaotic document population; They were also able to disprove claims of misappropriation by means of an automated Tracing Tool which could cut through a transactional data base formed of over 30 years’ worth of statements.

In this article for the International Financial Law Review Nick Hourigan (leader of FTI Consulting’s EMEA Data & Analytics practice), along with his colleague Charlotte Pender from law firm Charles Russell Speechlys, explain the differentiating role of technology and algorithmic analyses in performing tracing exercises involving complex and voluminous financial transactions.