MARTIN Langridge has been appointed to head accounting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmat-su’s Perth forensic practice.
Mr Langridge has been a partner with the firm for the past three years, working in its small to medium enterprise practice Growth Solutions.
Prior to that he worked in the UK and in the Perth office of another big-five firm.
The Perth forensic practice will be part of Deloitte’s 47-strong national forensic team that is headed by Tim Martin.
Mr Martin is a former Australian Securities and Investments Commission director of enforcement who was involved with investigations into Bond Corporation.
Mr Langridge said catching fraudsters would only be a small part of the practice’s work.
“A fair chunk of our work will be litigation support,” he said.
The other areas the practice covers are investigation, insurance, technology and risk.
Deloittes also has invested in a technology tool called Dtect, which acts as a diagnostic check on a business’ finances.
It tracks down things such as duplicate payments to suppliers and ghost employees.
Mr Langridge said that within 10 days of applying Dtect the forensic team would have a good feel for where the problems were in a business.
He said the firm also was offering LookFirst – a business intelligence pro-gram that runs background checks on companies and people.
Mr Langridge said a forensic accountant had to have a sceptical and questioning approach to their investigations.
“The main aspect of this practice is to be problem solvers,” he said.
“I became interested in the litigation side of the business after working with small businesses.”