Law - receipients and assistants - constructive trusts

The law of constructive trusts is used to impose liability against the fraudster and his accomplices. This area of law is quite complicated but generally the use of the law of trusts has some major benefits to the victim company. The law of constructive trusts allows property owned by the wrongdoers to be claimed by the victim.

These benefits are

• if the wrongdoers are bankrupt, the properties bought with stolen monies can still be claimed by the victim. The other creditors of the wrongdoes will therefore have no claim to these properties; and
• where the properties bought with stolen monies have increased in value, then the victim can benefit from the increase in value. It is possible for the victim to end off better off as a result of the fraud but this will be rare in real life.

The process of identifying which properties are bought with stolen monies and following the money trail is known as "tracing".