BrazilJames Tebbs joins senior team of Ankura’s financial crime practice
Ankura has strengthened its senior team in Dubai with James Tebbs, who has been appointed a Senior Managing Director.
Based in Dubai, Tebbs brings more than 20 years of professional experience in the Middle East and the United Kingdom to the firm. He specialises in advising clients on financial crime compliance, fraud prevention, fraud detection, and forensic investigation.
A Chartered Accountant by background, Tebbs joins Ankura’s Financial Crime practice, where he will focus on clients in sectors including financial services, government, construction, family offices, telecoms, healthcare, real estate, media, hospitality, and oil & gas.
Tebbs joins Akura – a global consulting firm with around 1,700 professionals in 35 locations – from Grant Thornton, where he led the firm’s forensic and compliance teams based in Dubai. Before that, he spent 18 years at PwC, the first 12 of which in the London working on forensic projects, followed by 6 years in the Middle East. He latterly led the firm’s Financial Crime and Forensic teams across Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.
Recent examples of his work include: developing a financial crime compliance framework for one of the region’s largest banks; conducting a fraud investigation at a sovereign wealth fund prior to an IPO; investigating allegations of bribery and corruption at a major GCC business; and assisting a local regulatory authority with the design and assessment of its fraud risk framework.
Tebbs also has extensive experience with dispute and litigation engagements and frequently works with colleagues in the forensic technology, data, and asset tracing teams. He has experience in data collation and interrogation, e-discovery, litigation and disclosure, corporate intelligence analysis, and asset tracing.
Outside of Ankura, Tebbs works with lawyers and other professional services experts responding to matters of professional negligence, including audit negligence, at both a local and international level.
Commenting on his move, Tebbs said: “Ankura has a market leading reputation in the Middle East and globally and I’m very excited to be joining the team at such a pivotal time for the industry and the region.”
