Evidence in Financial Crime Cases: What Is Collected and How

Financial crimes rarely have an eyewitness — their traces hide in figures, ledger entries and files. That is why a case is decided not by the sheer volume of paper collected, but by whether it survives the tests of relevance and admissibility in court. A single procedural violation at the outset can wipe out months of work. Below is a practical breakdown of which evidence actually works in financial crime cases, and how to gather it without fatal mistakes.

Who collects evidence and by what rules it is assessed

In Ukraine, the pre-trial investigation of economic criminal offences is conducted mainly by detectives of the Bureau of Economic Security (Бюро економічної безпеки, BEB), while certain offences fall to investigators of the National Police, the State Bureau of Investigation (DBR) or the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU). The “raw material” for proceedings often comes from adjacent bodies: the State Tax Service (Державна податкова служба, DPS) hands over audit reports and tax information, while the State Financial Monitoring Service (Держфінмоніторинг) provides consolidated materials on transactions bearing signs of suspicious activity.

A key caveat: no matter who collected the documents, in court they are assessed under the single set of rules of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine (Кримінальний процесуальний кодекс, KPK). A tax audit report or a financial-monitoring notice is a reason to investigate, not ready-made proof of guilt. A document becomes evidence only once it passes the procedural “filter”.

Four sources of evidence under the Criminal Procedure Code

Article 84 of the KPK defines evidence as factual data obtained in the manner prescribed by law, on the basis of which the investigator, prosecutor and court establish the circumstances of the proceedings. The law names four procedural sources of evidence, and in economic cases all of them are usually in play.

Testimony

This is information given during questioning by a suspect, witness, victim or expert. Explanations from a chief accountant, cashier or director often reveal the logic behind transactions. But without documentary support, testimony is shaky: the court assesses it only together with other evidence, never as a standalone “confession”.

Physical evidence and documents

Physical evidence means material objects: a seized system unit, a flash drive, a company stamp, draft notes. Documents are anything containing recorded information, on paper or electronic. It is documents that form the core of proof in financial cases — from a delivery note to a bank statement.

Expert opinion

A separate source is the opinion of a forensic economic expert (експерт-економіст). It does not add new facts; it gives the court a professional assessment of the data already collected: whether the amount of loss is documented, whether accounting entries match the primary documents, whether a shortage really occurred. More on the expert’s role below.

Primary documents — the foundation that most often “crumbles”

In a financial investigation, a primary document is not a formality but the source from which a figure is derived. The requirements are set by the Law of Ukraine “On Accounting and Financial Reporting in Ukraine”: a primary document records the fact of a business transaction and must contain mandatory particulars.

What to watch first:

• Invoices and delivery notes (видаткові, товарно-транспортні) confirm the movement of goods. A mismatch between the note and the actual movement is a classic point where a fictitious sale falls apart.
• Acts of completed works or provided services are most vulnerable where there is no material result; here the expert checks whether the transaction was real, not merely whether a signature exists.
• Payment documents (payment instructions, bank statements, cash orders) show the actual movement of funds, which is hard to fake.

The mandatory particulars — the name of the document, the date it was drawn up, the name of the enterprise, the content and volume of the transaction, its units of measurement, and the positions and signatures of the responsible persons — are not bureaucracy. The absence of even one key particular gives the defence grounds to question the fact of the transaction itself.

Electronic evidence: bank data, 1C / M.E.Doc, correspondence

Today most financial traces are electronic. In practice the most important are:

• bank statements — formally requested from the bank (where banking secrecy applies, on a ruling of the investigating judge granting temporary access); they carry high probative weight;
• accounting databases — 1C, BAS and M.E.Doc data: this is where the real, rather than the “paper”, entries become visible;
• electronic correspondence, messengers and drafts — which help prove intent and the role of specific persons.

How they are lawfully seized

The key rule: an item of electronic evidence is only as strong as the procedure that obtained it. In practice four things matter.

1. Legal basis — a ruling of the investigating judge for a search or for temporary access to things and documents, clearly outlining exactly what data is being seized.
2. Integrity fixing — a description of the media and, where possible, checksums (hashes), so it can later be proven that the data was not altered after seizure.
3. Copying or seizing the original — as a general rule the investigation seizes the original medium or makes a forensic copy; “selective” copying of individual files without proper recording is often challenged.
4. An unbroken chain of custody — from seizure to examination it must be clear who had access to the data, when, and on what basis.

Relevance and admissibility: why a copy without the original often fails

Two filters decide whether information becomes evidence. Relevance is whether the evidence bears on the circumstances of the case. Admissibility is whether it was obtained lawfully. Article 86 of the KPK recognises as admissible only evidence obtained in the manner established by the Code; Article 87 directly names as inadmissible any evidence obtained as a result of a substantial violation of human rights and freedoms — such evidence cannot form the basis of a verdict.

Hence the practical consequences:

• A copy without the original. An uncertified copy of a delivery note or a screenshot of a statement is easily called into question, because authenticity cannot be verified. The court prefers the original or a duly certified copy, and for electronic data — the original medium or a forensic copy.
• A document without expert examination. A stack of primary documents does not, by itself, prove the size of the loss. Until the economic substance is examined, it is raw material rather than evidence.

The “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine

If the primary evidence was obtained through a substantial violation of rights (for example, a search that went beyond the ruling or was conducted without one), the derivative evidence obtained thanks to information from it may also become inadmissible. An unlawfully seized 1C database can “poison” even the expert opinion built on it. The court, however, must establish the link: that the derivative evidence was obtained precisely thanks to the data from the inadmissible primary source. That is why clean procedure at the outset matters more than the volume collected.

The role of the economic expert: how a document becomes evidence

The most common misconception is that it is enough to “gather the papers”. In reality, examination stands between a document and evidence. A forensic economic expert:

• compares primary documents, accounting registers and reporting against one another;
• establishes whether a specific amount (of loss, unpaid tax, or shortage) is documented;
• reveals where the accounting diverges from the real transactions.

The expert’s competence is outlined by the established specialities of forensic economic examination — in particular, the examination of accounting, tax-accounting and reporting documents (11.1), of the economic activity of enterprises and organisations (11.2), and of financial and credit transactions (11.3). The procedure for appointment and conduct is governed by the Law of Ukraine “On Forensic Expert Examination” and the relevant Instruction of the Ministry of Justice (No. 53/5). It is a reasoned opinion with verifiable calculations that turns a mass of documents into evidence the court can understand.

Common prosecution mistakes that destroy evidence

Most often a verdict falls apart not for lack of documents, but because of procedure. The most common mistakes:

Mistake	Consequence in court
Search beyond the investigating judge’s ruling	Inadmissibility of the evidence and everything derived from it
Relying on copies without originals	Doubt as to authenticity, reduced weight of the evidence
Loss amount “from the investigator”, without examination	The calculation does not withstand scrutiny
Break in the chain of custody of the medium	Impossible to prove the data is unchanged
Ignoring exculpatory documents	Breach of thoroughness, grounds for the defence
Legal questions put to the expert (is there a crime)	Exceeding competence, opinion rejected

One point deserves emphasis: the economic expert answers questions of economic, not legal, substance. Whether a person is guilty and whether a corpus delicti exists are matters exclusively for the court; mixing these planes weakens the evidence in itself.

A short checklist for the party

• Work with originals or duly certified copies; for electronic data, keep the original medium.
• Check the basis of seizure (a search or temporary-access ruling) and its limits.
• Fix the integrity and the chain of custody from the moment of seizure.
• Do not estimate the loss “by eye” — order a forensic economic examination.
• Frame questions to the expert in economic, not legal, terms.
• Preserve and examine documents that speak in favour of the person — this is both a requirement of law and a safeguard against reversal of the verdict.

Properly collected evidence is always a combination of clean procedure and professional examination. If you are handling a financial crime case, or merely assessing its prospects, a forensic economic expert is worth involving as early as the materials-gathering stage — it is cheaper than rescuing evidence once you are already in court. For questions on document examination and the calculation of losses, you are welcome to contact me for a consultation.