Workshop on Misconducts Investigations and Legal Considerations
Workplace Investigations- Fraud Investigations and Departmental Enquiry
In an organizational setup there are many instances that occurs wherein employees violate the internal policies or rules of discipline or internal processes or commits the integrity breaches. All these instances are generally termed as the misconduct within the framework of the applicable laws or internal policies of the organization.
All these breaches or required to be formally investigated or enquired as per the applicable statutory procedures in order to ensure that the investigation or enquiry procedures that are adopted should not adversely impact the reputation of the organization. Consistent principles and procedures must be followed whenever allegations of misconduct are investigated or enquired to yield the best results.
An effective investigation process and enquiry process protects the interests of the Company and its shareholders. It ensures that the corporate activities comply with applicable laws and regulations; and it identify the areas of improvement for internal business operations. Therefore, an investigation is not conducted simply to uncover sufficient facts to justify a result or to just record somewhere that the incident occurred. An investigation is, in the first instance is focused on finding the facts.
Investigations determine, fully and credibly, what happened with respect to a particular incident –whether suspected conduct did or did not take place; what the circumstances were; who was involved; whether a violation of law or company policy occurred etc. An investigation must be perceived as having been thorough, independent, impartial and analytical.
Many a times, organizations also contemplate to initiate certain legal action against the perpetrator pertaining to any misconduct which has violated any statutory provisions or is recognized as an offence. The session will throw light on all these aspects to equip the HR and Legal Professionals, internal investigations team with appropriate knowledge of the law.
TAKEAWAYS
1. Importance of Handling Internal Investigations appropriately.
2. White Collar Crimes.
3. Discussion pertaining to acts having provisions pertaining to Fraud, Dishonesty and other Misconducts- Indian Penal Code, Contract Act, Prevention of Money Laundering Act, Prevention of Corruption Act, FEMA, Companies Act etc., Model Standing Orders and Code of Conduct of various organizations.
4. Cognizable, Non-cognizable, Bailable, Non-Bailable, Compounding of offences.
5. Departmental investigations, departmental enquiries and Indian Evidence Act.
6. Electronic evidence and admissibility in the court.
7. Fact finding Investigations.
8. Admission of guilt during investigations.
9. Difference between departmental investigations and departmental enquiries.