Le fasi ed i processi operativi di un’indagine interna o “internal investigation”

Companies need to be promptly and properly responsive to an alert signal, both if it arises from inside the company, for example via the whistleblowing channel, and from the outside environment, such as a request from the judicial authority and/or a regulator. A proactive approach may help the companies to discover promptly relevant circumstances and the responsible of the illicit conduct in order not to create further damages, both economic and/or reputational ones. Furthermore, the starting of an internal investigation shows the company willingness to implement remedial actions, with the aim to mitigate possible actions from the judicial authority and to defend company reputation. The last aspect, relevant itself, is that the execution of an internal investigation allows the companies to gather documental evidence to be used to defend the company in case some legal actions are taken against it.This mechanism can be possible only if the companies define and implement guidelines/procedures for the execution of an effective internal investigation, in which the phases, the objectives, the activities and the related responsible are defined. Even if it is not possible to define a standard approach to be followed for every internal investigations, since the subject matter, the context and the judicial authorities can be different each time, the objective of this article is to provide some operational guidelines and best practices for the execution of an effective internal investigation, without the aim to substitute norms and regulation that are not present in our country.