When Your Business Needs a Forensic Economic Expert: 7 Situations

A tax reassessment, a summons to the Bureau of Economic Security, a dispute with a co-owner or a bank — and immediately the question arises: is this a job for an accountant, an auditor, or a forensic economic expert? The distinction is not merely formal. The right answer decides whether you end up with evidence a court will actually accept. Below are seven situations in which you specifically need a forensic economic expert, plus a checklist to test whether yours is one of them.

The single criterion that decides everything

Let me start with the main rule, because it saves both time and money. A forensic economic examination (in Ukraine, sudovo-ekonomichna ekspertyza) is needed when establishing a circumstance of the case requires specialised economic knowledge — not merely skill with arithmetic. That is exactly how the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine (KPK) frames the ground for an examination in its Article 242: an expert is engaged when a fact relevant to the proceedings cannot be established without specialised knowledge. Essentially the same logic applies in commercial, civil and administrative proceedings.

The practical takeaway is simple. If a figure can be read straight off a document and no one disputes it, an accountant is enough. If an owner or investor needs an independent opinion on whether the financial statements are reliable, that is an audit. But when a sum must be proven in a dispute or an investigation, when it is contested, or when it is a qualifying element of an offence and your opponent disagrees with it, you need a forensic expert’s report. It is precisely that report which the procedural law recognises as an independent source of evidence.

7 situations where a business needs a forensic economic expert

These are the situations I meet most often in my expert work. They share one feature: a contested sum of money appears in the case, and it is not enough merely to name it — it has to be proven from the documents and by a methodology.

1. The DPS has reassessed your taxes and you are preparing a challenge

The classic trigger. You have received a documentary audit report and a tax assessment notice (in Ukraine, podatkove povidomlennia-rishennia, PPR) stating additional taxes, penalties and late fees. The report reflects the position of only one side — the State Tax Service (DPS). To enter an administrative dispute under the Code of Administrative Procedure (KASU) with a counter-calculation rather than bare objections, you need a forensic economic examination: it shows whether the amount of the tax liability is confirmed by documents for the specific transactions and period. The correctly framed question for the expert is economic — “are the tax-accounting data for these transactions confirmed?” — not a request to judge whether the DPS acted lawfully. The legal assessment is for the court, not the economist.

2. Criminal proceedings under Article 212 of the Criminal Code — tax evasion

When a reassessment escalates into criminal proceedings for tax evasion, the case is usually investigated by the Bureau of Economic Security (BEB) with the DPS involved. Here the amount of unpaid tax is not an abstraction but a qualifying element on which the very composition of the offence depends. As a rule, a court will not treat its size as proven without a professional economic calculation. This is the domain of forensic economic examination, not of an audit report.

3. Misappropriation and embezzlement — Article 191 of the Criminal Code

In cases of appropriation, embezzlement or misappropriation of property (Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, KK), the key question is the size of the damage caused. It is established from primary documents, accounting registers and contracts. Both the prosecution and the defence have an equal interest in the figure being calculated correctly and transparently: an inflated or unproven loss is just as vulnerable to challenge as an understated one.

4. A corporate dispute between co-owners

Distribution of profit, the value of a departing member’s share, suspicions of asset stripping or of an understated financial result — these are economic questions that can rarely be settled by eye. The expert examines what the real financial result was, whether payouts match the documents, and whether transactions took place that reduced the value of the business. Such a report becomes the backbone of a position in the commercial court.

5. A credit or debt dispute with a bank

In debt-recovery disputes, the typical line of defence is not the existence of the debt but its size: how interest and penalties were charged, how payments were credited, whether the principal was calculated correctly. These are purely computational questions that a forensic economic expert verifies against the contract terms and the account statements. Often it is exactly this recalculation that changes the final sum the court awards.

6. Recovering losses and lost profit

A commercial or civil claim for damages rests on a proven amount of loss. Actual losses can still be shown with documents, but lost profit — income not received — almost always requires an economic justification built on a methodology. Without an expert calculation, a court frequently dismisses the claim precisely because the amount is unproven, not because there was no breach.

7. An internal investigation or a pre-deal review

Not every situation goes straight to court. Suspicion of employee wrongdoing, discrepancies in the accounts, checking a counterparty or a target before a purchase (due diligence) — this is the field of a business’s economic security. Here a commissioned expert study is appropriate: it helps the owner make a decision and, if needed, becomes the foundation of a future claim or a report to law enforcement.

Who initiates the examination — and what you yourself can do

Here it is important to distinguish two different actions.

• Ordering an examination (in criminal proceedings, “engaging” one) can be done only by whoever is running the case: a court, by ruling; an investigator, inquiry officer or prosecutor, by their procedural decision; and, at certain stages, an investigating judge on a party’s motion.
• Commissioning an expert report is something a party or its lawyer may do on a contractual basis, before the court even decides on ordering an examination.

So you are not obliged to wait passively. In commercial, civil and administrative proceedings the law expressly allows you to file an expert report commissioned by a participant together with the claim or the response. In criminal proceedings the defence may likewise engage an expert independently, or move for one before the investigator, prosecutor or investigating judge.

An important nuance about choosing the specialist. When you commission a report yourself, you choose the expert at your own discretion — the key point is that they hold a valid certification in the specific economic specialty you need (you can verify this against the Register of Certified Forensic Experts). When the court orders the examination, you may only propose a candidate; the final decision stays with the court.

When a commissioned study is enough

A commissioned report is especially apt when you need to enter the process with ready-made evidence, to back a motion before a court examination is ordered, or simply to understand your own position before going to court. If the case is complex and the other side is sure to contest the calculation, it is often sensible to combine both routes: enter with a preliminary report and be ready for a full court-ordered examination.

Audit, a DPS inspection and a forensic examination are not the same thing

The most common confusion people bring to me is treating these three tools as interchangeable. They answer different questions and carry different legal weight.

Tool	What it answers	Legal weight in a dispute
Internal audit / audit of statements	Whether the statements are reliable and the figures can be trusted	Not procedural evidence in itself
DPS inspection (audit)	Whether the Tax Code (PKU) was complied with and taxes paid in full	The report is the state’s position, the basis for a PPR
Forensic economic examination	A specific question from the court or investigation (an amount, confirmation of a transaction)	The report is an independent source of evidence

You cannot relabel an inspection report or an auditor’s opinion as an “expert report”: different actors, different guarantees of independence, a different procedural form. But these documents can serve as source material that the expert studies while forming their own, independent conclusion.

Why delay is expensive

Time in such cases works against you, and here is why.

• Documents disappear and change. Primary records get lost, counterparties close down, electronic databases are purged once retention periods expire. The later you start the calculation, the greater the chance that part of the evidence can no longer be recovered.
• Procedural deadlines run out. Challenging a tax assessment notice, the limitation period in commercial and civil disputes — all of these have limits. A missed deadline can sometimes render even the strongest calculation worthless.
• Your opponent seizes the initiative. If you delay, the other side may commission the examination first — and the case acquires a calculation in a version convenient to them, which you then have to rebut.

Hence the basic rule of my practice: think about an expert not when defeat is already looming, but the moment it becomes clear the sum is in dispute.

A self-check: “is this my case?”

Answer yes or no to a few questions:

• Does the case involve a sum of money that is disputed, or that affects how an offence is qualified (a reassessment, a loss, a debt)?
• Does your opponent disagree with your calculation, or have one of their own?
• To prove the figure, are specialised economic skills required, rather than an extract from a single document?
• Is the case already in court or under investigation, or clearly heading there?
• Are the documents numerous, contradictory, or in need of being drawn into a single picture?

If you answered yes to even two or three of these, yours is most likely a case for a forensic economic examination — not for an accountant or an auditor.

If you are unsure whether your situation calls for an examination, and which questions are correct to put, it is better to check at the outset than after a missed deadline. As a forensic economic expert, I can help you determine whether a report is needed and frame the questions so that it carries evidentiary weight in court.