What Documents Are Needed for a Financial-Credit Operations Examination

The most common reason a forensic economic expert has to write that answering a question “is not possible” is not the difficulty of the question itself, but an incomplete or improperly executed set of documents. An examination of financial-credit operations is a study of documents and figures, not of people and circumstances: where there is no document, there is no subject of study on that particular point. Below we set out what materials need to be gathered, how to certify them correctly, on what procedural basis an examination is ordered, and which mistakes in wording the questions make a meaningful conclusion impossible before the work even begins.

Why everything starts with the documents

A forensic examination of financial-credit operations — expert specialty 11.3, “Examination of documents of financial-credit operations”, under the register of certified forensic experts of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine — is a study of documents, not of persons or intentions. The expert economist does not question witnesses, does not interpret intent and does not establish guilt. They work exclusively with what is in the case file: agreements, bank postings, accounting registers. If a required document is missing, then for that particular point there is simply no subject to examine.

Hence the key practical conclusion: the quality and completeness of the document package determine the outcome before the expert opens the first page. A large share of “no-answer” conclusions is caused precisely by a party supplying fragmentary materials in the hope that the expert will “somehow calculate it anyway”. Calculating without primary data is impossible — that would no longer be an examination, but a guess.

The procedural basis: who orders the examination, and on what authority

Before gathering documents, it helps to understand which type of proceedings you are in, because this determines both the form of appointment and who assembles the package.

• Criminal proceedings. The grounds for conducting an examination and the procedure for engaging an expert are set out in Articles 242–243 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine (KPK). The examination is ordered by a decree of a party to the criminal proceedings (the investigator or prosecutor) or, in cases provided for by the KPK, by a ruling of the investigating judge or the court. In financial and economic cases the requesting parties are often detectives of the Bureau of Economic Security (BEB), investigators of the National Police, and prosecutors. The underlying materials frequently originate from inspection reports of the State Tax Service (DPS) or data from the State Financial Monitoring Service (Derzhfinmonitoring); however, these bodies do not order the examination — they may only be a source of primary documents.
• Commercial proceedings. The appointment of an examination is governed by Articles 98–101 of the Commercial Procedure Code of Ukraine (HPK): the court orders it at a party’s request or on its own initiative (Article 99) by way of a ruling (Article 100); the requirements for the conclusion itself are set by Article 98, and an examination commissioned by a participant in the case is addressed in Article 101.
• Civil and administrative proceedings. Analogous mechanisms for ordering an examination and requirements for the conclusion are provided by the corresponding provisions of the Civil Procedure Code (TsPK) and the Code of Administrative Procedure of Ukraine (KASU).
• Commissioning outside proceedings. A party (a lawyer, an enterprise, an individual) may commission an expert study on a contractual basis. The general principles of this activity are set by the Law of Ukraine “On Forensic Examination”, and the procedure for ordering and conducting it by the Instruction on the Appointment and Conduct of Forensic Examinations and Expert Studies, approved by Ministry of Justice order No. 53/5 of 08 October 1998.

The pivotal procedural document is therefore the court ruling, the decree of the investigator or prosecutor, or the study contract. It defines the scope of the examination and the set of questions. Without it there is no basis for the work, and no correct conclusion will appear.

The basic document package

The package for a study of financial-credit operations can be divided into three groups. The list below is a reference point: the exact composition is always refined against the questions posed in the case and the nature of the operations.

Group	What it includes	Purpose
Loan and contract	The loan agreement with all annexes, supplementary agreements, repayment schedules, pledge / mortgage / surety agreements	Establish the terms, amount, rate, deadlines and security
Banking and settlement	Statements on loan and current accounts, memorial orders, payment instructions, the bank’s debt calculation	Trace the movement of funds: disbursement, repayment, accrual
Accounting and primary	Primary documents, accounting registers, trial balances, the general ledger, cash documents	Reconcile the borrower’s records against the bank data

The loan and contract group

This is the starting point. You need the loan agreement and every annex to it — it is often the annexes that carry the key terms (fees, the method of accruing interest, the order of repayment). All supplementary agreements are mandatory (extensions, rate changes, restructurings); otherwise the calculation will rest on outdated terms. Repayment schedules are needed in the version in force for each relevant period. Where security is involved — pledge, mortgage and surety agreements with their annexes.

The banking and settlement group

This is the “circulatory system” of the study. You need:

• statements on the loan and current accounts for the entire period under review, with no gaps in dates;
• memorial orders and payment instructions confirming disbursement and repayment;
• the bank’s debt calculation (principal, interest, fees, penalties) — so that there is something to verify and something against which to reconcile the primary data supplied.

The accounting and primary group

When the borrower is an enterprise, its accounting documents are added to the bank data: trial balances for the relevant accounts, the general ledger, ledger cards and analytics for the loan and settlement accounts, cash documents (where there were cash operations), and the primary documents confirming the intended use of the funds. It is precisely the reconciliation of the borrower’s records with the bank postings that allows the expert to answer questions about the completeness and accuracy with which operations were recorded.

Proper certification: copies or originals

A document that cannot be identified as authentic is, for the expert, effectively absent. The requirement is therefore simple: submit originals or duly certified copies.

• For materials within proceedings, copies are certified by the party supplying them or by the court, in line with procedural requirements and the accompanying documents.
• Copies from an enterprise carry the signature of an authorised person, a “true copy” stamp, the date and, where applicable, a seal.
• Bank statements should be in a form that allows their source and completeness to be established.

Illegible scans, pages torn out of context, copies without certification details — each of these is a ground for a request to replace the documents, and if that request is ignored, a ground for a conclusion that no answer is possible on the relevant point.

Wording the questions correctly

Even a complete package will not help if the questions are framed incorrectly. This is the second most common cause of problematic conclusions.

Typical mistakes:

1. Legal questions instead of economic ones. An expert economist does not decide whether an agreement was “lawful”, whether the bank’s actions were “proper”, or whether a person’s conduct constitutes an offence — that is the exclusive competence of the investigation and the court. A correct question is framed in terms of accounting and calculation: “does the amount of interest accrued correspond to the terms of the agreement”, “is repayment in the amount of X documentarily confirmed”.
2. Questions about guilt and intent. Wordings such as “did the person misappropriate the funds” fall outside the scope of specialised economic knowledge. The expert establishes the movement and recording of funds, not the subjective side of the act.
3. Questions with no link to documents. If a question does not rest on specific materials provided, it cannot be answered even in theory.
4. Too broad a scope. “Examine the entire financial activity of the enterprise over five years”, with no specific operations, agreements or periods, is a path to delay or refusal.

A better approach. Frame questions specifically, within economic competence, tied to a period, an agreement and amounts. Where useful, agree the wording with the expert in advance: the law does not prohibit this, and in practice it saves months.

Timeframes and the right to additional materials

The time needed for an examination depends not on some abstract “workload”, but on the volume and complexity of the operations, the number of episodes and the completeness of the documents supplied. A study of thousands of postings over several years objectively takes longer than checking a single loan agreement.

It is important to know that the law grants the expert the right to request additional materials where those provided are insufficient to answer. But each such request, as a rule, suspends the running of the deadline until a reply is received. It is therefore in the party’s own interest to assemble the fullest possible package the first time. If documents genuinely do not exist (lost, seized, not preserved), this should be flagged at once: it changes how the questions are framed and what can be expected of the conclusion.

Why an incomplete package is the main cause of “no answer”

A conclusion that answering a question is not possible is not an expert’s whim but an honest record of the fact that there is nothing to examine. It most often arises when:

• an agreement is supplied without its annexes and schedules — there is nothing against which to verify the calculation;
• statements have gaps in the periods — the movement of funds cannot be traced end to end;
• the borrower’s accounting registers are missing — bank data and records cannot be reconciled;
• copies are uncertified — the documents cannot be accepted as authentic;
• the questions are legal or about guilt — outside the competence of an expert economist.

In every one of these cases the problem is solvable before the examination is ordered: it is enough to reconcile the list against the documents actually held and close the gaps, or to redefine the questions. It is precisely at this stage that involving an expert as a consultant delivers the greatest benefit.

---

If you are preparing materials for an examination of financial-credit operations, or merely drafting the questions for a ruling or decree, it is worth agreeing the list of documents and the wording of the questions in advance. That is the most reliable way to obtain a substantive conclusion rather than a refusal caused by an incomplete package. Get in touch for a consultation — we will review your situation in concrete terms.