New Zealand
I am a Specialist Investigator with the Northern Asset Recovery Unit (ARU), Financial Crime Group (FCG) of New Zealand Police. Police is the lead agency responsible for reducing crime and enhancing community safety. Police work in partnership with individuals, communities, businesses and other public sector agencies to achieve their vision of Safer Communities Together. FCG has an all of government mandate to undertake the restraint and forfeiture of criminally acquired or derived assets, not just for Police, but also for all government law enforcement agencies. ARU's primary roles are to deny criminals the opportunity to benefit from their offending or the ability to re-invest in criminal activity. Police do this by taking away their "ill-gotten gains" and making sure that crime really doesn't pay. International trends among Law Enforcement Agencies indicate that recovering assets is often more successful and may be a bigger deterrent than the criminal prosecution. That trend is being mirrored in New Zealand and as a result, this area of investigation is growing. My role is to manage reactive and proactive investigations, work together with investigation teams, targeting serious criminal activity, prepare and execute production orders and search warrants, carry out effective interviews, and interact with members of the international financial business community.
Responsible for the delivery and management of the Ministry’s responses to benefit and social housing fraud.