Our people
Peter completed a Physics degree at Imperial College including a Masters in Statistical Mathematics at Padua University in Italy. He graduated in 2003 and joined BDO Stoy Hayward in the Forensic Accounting team where he investigates company accounts to look for evidence of anything from fraud to money laundering.
“Every project is an investigation, whether you’re interviewing people or interrogating data to get to the truth of the situation.”
I love solving problems and that’s what Forensic Accounting is all about. I’m coming to the end of the ACA exams – I qualify towards the end of this year.
So far I’ve been lucky enough to travel with work. I worked in Germany to gather evidence for an expert witness testimony that was being provided by BDO Stoy Hayward and in Azerbaijan reviewing oil contracts for the Government. I speak Italian, French, Spanish, German and Russian to varying degrees of competency and it has been good to use my language skills in my work.
Here in the UK I have been working on a large DTI investigation that has been making headline news. Some cases, like this one, can go on for years while others can be over in a matter of days. Negligence cases or small company frauds are a good example of shorter cases.
Whatever the scale of the project, they tend to start with a mountain of data to sift through. That can be one of the challenges of the job; maintaining focus and accuracy as you reach the tenth file in the pile. That’s just a part of it though and sometimes what at first appears to be a small detail becomes crucial at a later stage. I also spend a lot of my time on-site with clients and writing reports on my findings.
There are lots of different parts to my job, which is great and keeps me on my toes.
Looking ahead, I’d say I want to step up my involvement in big international cases and I might look into a client secondment with someone like the Serious Fraud Office or the DTI.
What makes me different? I’ve worked in Azerbaijan, the wild west of the business world!