Integrity, Objectivity, and Accountability in Private Internal White-collar Crime Investigations: The Case of Moscow School Investigation in Norway

ABSTRACT

It is often argued that private internal investigations suffer from lack of integrity, lack of objectivity, and lack of accountability. Private internal investigations are paid by clients who order an extraordinary examination of suspicions of misconduct and crime. Clients hire fraud examiners from law firms, auditing firms, and consulting firms to carry out investigations. Based on a mandate from the client, investigators conduct a goal-oriented data collection to reconstruct the past. Unfortunately, limited scope, time pressure, resource constraints, and other factors in investigations may cause results such as victims of blame games. In this article, the case a private internal investigation in Norway is described, where there is a lack of integrity, lack of objectivity, and lack of accountability.

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Petter Gottschalk

PETTER GOTTSCHALK is Professor in the Department of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo, Norway. He has been the CEO of several companies including an ABB subsidiary and the Norwegian Computing Center. Dr. Gottschalk has published extensively on knowledge management, information technology strategy, law enforcement, police investigations, fraud examinations, financial crime, and white-collar crime.