Author: Kate Winter

The ACi is excited to announce the appointment of Alex Gaft as ACi Advisory Panel Member. As a seasoned corporate investigations professional, Alex will provide the ACi with advice on corporate investigations management, cyber fraud, networking, and will contribute to the ACi’s key projects (including training, investigation standards, and knowledge bank).   

Alex has over 20 years of professional investigation experience at both national and international levels, within the public and private sectors.  Alex started his career in 2001 as an investigator with the Israeli National Police. From 2010 to 2012, Alex worked as a Regional Head of Forensic Audit for ArcelorMittal, covering CIS and based in Ukraine. In 2012 Alex joined ENRC in London as Group Head of Investigations and between 2014 and 2018 led Corporate investigations team, covering 7 countries in CIS, for Veon, based in Amsterdam. In 2018 Alex returned to Israel and worked in Cyber Security and Cyber Fraud prevention. Since January 2020 Alex is heading Forensic Services team for BDO. He holds an MBA and is a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), Certified Information systems Auditor (CISA), and is Certified in Financial Crime Prevention.  

Speaking of the appointment, ACi’s Executive Director, Mary Eastwood Jones, said: 

‘Alex has been a very proactive ACi supporter for some time- in fact, he introduced me to the ACi community.  Alex is a highly skilled and talented subject matter expert, networker, and horizon scanner. He really has his finger on the pulse of the key emerging issues of importance to corporate investigators, and we are excited to be working with him for the benefit of our community.’  

Please join us in welcoming Alex as an official member of our Advisory Panel.  

On behalf of the ACi Executive Committee and all the staff we would like to wish our members celebrating a merry Christmas and a prosperous and healthy New Year. We will be bringing you more webinars, training and networking events in the very near future!

We rely on our members’ input, ideas and perspectives so please get involved in one of our many projects, from education and certification pathway, investigation typology, to practitioner series. Please look out for our ‘Pick a Project’ initiative.

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Mary Eastwood Jones to the Executive Committee in the role of Executive Director.  Mary ​has over two decades of experience as an Investigations, Whistleblowing and Ethics specialist across the public, private, charitable and humanitarian sectors. With her extensive investigations experience, Mary will be leading several strategic initiatives for the ACi and will be a mentor for staff.

“We are delighted to welcome Mary to the team. She has joined the ACi in a key leadership role to help us deliver some exciting projects that will benefit the investigations community,” Steve Young, CEO, ACi said. “Mary has incredible energy and passion for investigations and I, along with my colleagues, look forward to working with Mary at this juncture in our history. 2022 will be an exciting year for the ACi as we return to face-to-face events for the corporate investigations community throughout the world.”

Mary started her career in criminology research focusing on crime reduction, social inclusion and ethical compliance for a number of UK agencies, including the Ministry of Justice, Youth Justice Board, Home Office, and UK police forces, as well as charities. She then worked in an international NGO as Fraud and Corruption Team lead and most recently as Head of Investigations at the world’s largest university publisher. She is a certified fraud examiner and an investigator with significant experience in fraud, bribery and corruption risk management and prevention of sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse. She has successfully set up and managed internal global ‘whistleblowing’ channels, investigations functions and ethics programmes, and has conducted hundreds of complex global investigations across cultures and languages in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas, often in hardship settings. 

Mary commented, “I am excited to contribute to the vision of the ACi, a global not-for-profit with a mission to recognise, develop, and support the corporate investigations profession and our diverse community. I am passionate and fastidious about this mission, and in particular I truly believe that those in our profession should have the skills and support to investigate without fear, favour or fuss- to the highest professional standards.  As someone who has drawn great insights from the ACi community, I am honoured to pay it forward in this role.”

Read Mary’s bio here.