The first successful prosecution has taken place and it turns out it was the finance director that did it.

I say bad news, but it is, of course, quite right and proper that someone should pay for their crimes.
What’s bad about it is that it happens to be a finance director ­ a man of your profession who has been found to be on the wrong side of the law.

Though the circumstances of the case are no doubt interesting, what strikes me as relevant is that Neils Jorgen Tobiasen, FD of UK security company CBRN, could well give investigators the idea that they should be looking for the FD and probing what he or she knows in any future cases ­ a very unhappy precedent indeed to be setting.

Of course, there might be some justification for this view. Only recently a very successful private sector fraud investigator revealed how, when called in to have a look at the disappearance of cash, he and his colleagues often focused on the behaviour of people with ready access to the cash ­ it’s a procedural given to consider the accountants as obvious suspects in a fraud.

But a bribery case overseas? Surely that would be head of sales or someone in a similar role like that, who would be the guilty party.

Surely the FD, back home booking the numbers, is not the person at the sharp end.

Now, I can reveal Tobiasen was also MD of the company, which does place him in that sort of position, but I don’t think that will place other FDs, guilty or not, beyond suspicion.

The fact is that, with the increasingly strategic role of an FD, why shouldn’t investigators make him or her one of the usual suspects. There’s a warning if ever there was one.