The Fiscal Year 2009 Annual Business Plan (ABP) establishes Criminal Investigation’s role and responsibilities to the overall accomplishment of the IRS Strategic Plan.  The ABP outlines steps to be taken to ensure the effective use of all available Criminal Investigation (CI) resources to not only deliver our mission, but to also meet the challenges of the future.  Criminal Investigation’s highest priority, our core mission, is to support tax administration. 

The implementation of strategies, objectives and investigative priorities that focus on our core mission emphasize a balanced enforcement program and incorporates measures that will facilitate the development and prosecution of high quality financial investigations.  The FY 2009 investigative priorities that will guide CI in delivering this plan are listed in order of precedence: 

• Legal source tax crimes
• Illegal source tax and financial crimes, including terrorist financing investigations
• Narcotics related financial crimes

The IRS Strategic Plan for 2009-2013 reflected below acknowledges two strategic goals with supporting strategic foundations focusing on the effective utilization of employees and technology:   

I. Improve Service to Make Voluntary Compliance Easier

• Incorporate taxpayer perspectives to improve all service interactions
• Expedite and improve issue resolution across all interaction with taxpayers, making it easier to navigate the IRS
• Provide targeted, timely guidance and outreach to taxpayers
• Strengthen partnerships with tax practitioners, tax preparers and other third parties to ensure effective tax administration 

II. Enforce the Law to Ensure Everyone Meets Their Obligation to Pay Taxes

• Swiftly and proactively enforce the law
• Expand enforcement approaches and tools
• Meet the challenges of international tax administration
• Allocate compliance resources using a data-driven approach to target existing and emerging high-risk areas
• Continue focused oversight of the tax-exempt sector
• Ensure that all tax practitioner, tax preparers, and other third parties in the tax law system adhere to professional standards and follow the law

Strategic Foundations: Invest for High Performance

• Make the IRS the best place to work in government
• Build and deploy advanced information technology systems, processes and tools to improve efficiency and productivity
• Use data and research across the organization to make informed decisions and allocate resources
• Ensure the privacy and security of data and the safety and security of employees
• Expand online tools and services

Criminal Investigation actively supports the IRS Strategic goals through the following strategies:

Improve Service to Make Voluntary Compliance Easier

Maximize the impact of criminal enforcement through a communications strategy that encompasses the effective utilization of publicity, education, and outreach.

Criminal Investigation will continue to recognize our key audience as the compliant taxpayer who deserves to trust that our government’s tax administration is fair.  As a means to foster deterrence and enhance voluntary compliance, CI will vigorously capitalize on media and other outreach opportunities to effectively maximize publicity of its investigations.  Publicity will focus on educating and informing the American public of enforcement efforts that identify and halt fraud schemes and scams, as well as enforcement efforts that ensure all taxpayers pay their fair share of taxes.  The operational priorities under this strategy are:

• Communication Outreach
• Coordinate with Public Information Officers

Enforce the Law to Ensure Everyone Meets
Their Obligation to Pay Taxes

Maintain focus on significant legal source tax investigations, including efforts to strengthen the partnering with IRS operating divisions to implement and maintain a successful Fraud Referral Program that promotes the development of quality high-impact investigations.

Effectively work with the Department of Treasury, the Department of Justice, and other law enforcement partners to enforce tax laws and other criminal statutes to combat corporate fraud, terrorism, and the financial aspects of other criminal activity, and enhance Bank Secrecy Act compliance efforts.

Criminal Investigation’s Specific FY 2009 Operational Priorities

Fraud Referral Program - Criminal Investigation will continue to strengthen the Fraud Referral Program by working closely with Small Business/Self Employed (SB/SE), Large and Mid-Sized Business (LMSB), Tax Exempt/Government Entities (TE/GE), and Wage and Investment (W&I) to promote fraud awareness and to facilitate fraud training.  Each field office will maintain a fraud referral coordinator, who will proactively work to enhance this important program by encouraging the development of high quality and high impact fraud referrals.  

Abusive Tax Schemes - These diverse schemes include offshore employee leasing, reinsurance schemes, potentially abusive tax shelters, warehouse banking, and a variety of schemes involving foreign and domestic trusts.  Criminal Investigation will strengthen its partnerships with the IRS operating divisions and explore cross border investigations by engaging our foreign partners, as well as continuing our collaborative work with Department of Justice to further our mutual goal of halting abusive tax schemes.

International Tax Fraud - Criminal Investigation will focus on innovative enforcement activities to identify taxpayers who exploit the international banking system to conceal income.  Criminal Investigation will continue to partner with LMSB to identify and investigate egregious tax and Foreign Bank Account Records (FBAR) violations.  These actions will use all investigative avenues including the use of IRS Attaches, Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLAT) agreements, and Simultaneous Criminal Investigation Programs (SCIP) investigations to stem the increase in international tax evasion. 

Non-Filers - Working with other IRS operating division, CI will develop investigations of egregious, high-income non-filers covering a wide geographic area and a broad spectrum of occupations and professions.  To further combat this chronic compliance problem, CI will continue to participate in a Service-wide initiative to develop a comprehensive Non-filer Strategy. 

Refund Crimes - Criminal Investigation will expand its efforts to combat questionable refund schemes by developing high quality, large dollar investigations in support of the overall IRS revenue protection strategy.  Through its Questionable Refund Program (QRP) and Return Preparer Program (RPP), CI will identify and develop leads on individuals and businesses that utilize unscrupulous techniques to either obtain fraudulent refunds or fraudulently reduce their tax liabilities.  Criminal Investigation will continue to partner with the IRS operating divisions to improve Service-wide ability to detect and prevent fraudulent refunds, including the use of technological advances in fraud detection software. 

Employment Tax -  Criminal Investigation will develop and investigate egregious, high impact employment tax cases involving a wide variety of industries and professions.  Working with SB/SE’s Employment Tax Specialty Group, CI will also endeavor to develop high impact employment tax cases utilizing Combined Annual Wage Reporting data. 

Counterterrorism - Criminal Investigation will continue to contribute financial investigative expertise and resources to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces and the USAOs’ Anti-Terrorism Task Forces.  Criminal Investigation will also work closely with the Treasury Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence and the Office of Foreign Assets Control to investigate and freeze accounts controlled by individuals, “charitable” organizations, or entities suspected of raising or facilitating the movement of funds to support international and domestic terrorism.  Criminal Investigation will continue to participate in the Non-Government Organizations Task Force established by the Department of Justice to identify “charitable” tax exempt entities suspected of raising and facilitating the movement of funds to support suspected terrorist organizations. 

Corporate Fraud - Criminal Investigation will build on relationships with the United States Attorney’s Offices, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and other federal and state agencies to ensure maximum investigative resources are devoted to the investigation of major corporate fraud cases impacting our national economy.  Criminal Investigation will continue to work with SB/SE and LMSB to identify and investigate alleged financial fraud by corporate officers and executives. 

Political/Public Corruption - Criminal Investigation will give priority to investigations involving the breach of public trust by government officials and continue to participate in significant, high profile public corruption cases that require our special agents’ unique financial investigative skills. 

Money Laundering/Financial Criminal Activity - Concentrating its anti-money laundering efforts on investigations that adversely affect tax administration, CI will continue to work with United States Attorney’s Offices to investigate significant, high impact financial investigations, and support the efforts of the high risk money laundering and related financial crimes area task forces, Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) Review Teams, and other task forces. 

Asset Forfeiture - Criminal Investigation will continue to actively use its asset forfeiture authority to further its enforcement goals.  Field offices will continue to work with local, county, and state police officers to reimburse them for overtime and related expenses paid to officers that participate in qualifying joint investigations. 

Bank Secrecy Act - Criminal Investigation will utilize information obtained through reporting requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) to identify significant legal and illegal source tax cases, as well as money laundering, terrorist financing, and narcotics investigations through the analysis of Suspicious Activity Requests (SARs) and Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs).  To strengthen BSA compliance efforts, CI will continue to develop and support BSA investigations, while making every effort to identify assets subject to forfeiture.  Criminal Investigation will foster strong and meaningful communication and coordination between SB/SE Fraud Technical Advisors, BSA Examiners, and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). 

Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) - Criminal Investigation will maintain support for the National Drug Control and Money Laundering Strategies by continuing to provide resources to Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) and High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) investigations.  Criminal Investigation will use its financial investigative expertise and resources to dismantle and disrupt major narcotics trafficking/money laundering organizations and forfeit their illegal profits, while also targeting emerging narcotics-related financial schemes, including bulk cash smuggling. 

Conditions of Probation/Restitution - Criminal Investigation will coordinate with SB/SE, United States Probation Office and the United States Attorneys’ Financial Litigation Units to effectively monitor and track compliance with conditions of probation and restitution. 

Invest for High Performance

• Increase workforce productivity through improvement in recruitment, diversity, retention and strengthened leadership.
• Increase efficiency and quality through improvements in business systems and effective management oversight.

Criminal Investigation will enhance employee productivity and effectiveness by encouraging professional development and skills transfer, and by facilitating employee communication.  Criminal Investigation continues to develop and enhance processes and programs to improve investigative efficiencies and reduce administrative burden without sacrificing quality or internal controls.  Criminal Investigations specific operational priorities are detailed below:

Identify and Develop Criminal Investigation Leadership Candidates - Criminal Investigation will continue the integration of the Leadership Succession Review process to identify and develop future leaders by providing an opportunity for all managers to become actively involved with their development. 

Maintain a Knowledgeable Workforce - Criminal Investigation will continue to emphasize Knowledge Management (KM) as a means to facilitate learning, enhance technical expertise and maximize knowledge transfer.  To help retain the tacit knowledge that would normally be lost through attrition of experienced staff, CI will continue to emphasize and support the use of CASE (Communities Accessing and Sharing Expertise), while making technical and policy information more readily accessible to all employees through internal web-based systems. 

Foster Clear Communication - Clear and frequent communication is a key element of effective leadership, teamwork, and esprit de corps, and is a critical element to the successful delivery of organizational goals.  Criminal Investigation will continue to take proactive steps to improve communication, through face-to-face interaction when practicable, and through other useful means of communication. 

Improve Employee Satisfaction and Engagement - Through the feedback obtained from the employee satisfaction survey process, various advisory councils, the Ask the Chief Program and Employee Suggestion program, Criminal Investigation will address barriers impeding the full engagement of employees.  Additionally, through Management Directive 715, Criminal Investigation will conduct a barrier analysis with respect to identifying and eliminating barriers to free and open workplace competition while seeking to launch effective strategies that serve to build a model EEO Program.

Recruit High Caliber Employees - To recruit diverse, highly qualified candidates for professional, paraprofessional, and support positions, CI will provide Recruit Coordinator Training that will include the partnering with full-time and field recruiters, the Human Capital Office and the office of Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity.  Criminal Investigation will continue to use various specialized hiring strategies to supplement the competitive centralized hiring process. 

Improve Criminal Investigation Management Information System (CIMIS) Timeliness and Accuracy - Criminal Investigation continues to upgrade and enhance the new CIMIS system. 

Improve Efficiency on Criminal Subject Investigations - Criminal Investigation will promptly take investigative actions, effectively use all available resources, and make timely decisions relative to case matters in developing and completing quality high-impact Legal/Illegal source Subject Criminal Investigations.  A commitment of increased management oversight and direction will ensure CI maintains optimum workload levels.  

Through the Electronic Crimes Section, CI will continue to enhance and improve the computer forensic processes by building and deploying advanced Information Technology (IT) systems, processes and tools to improve efficiency and productivity.  It is incumbent upon CI to capitalize on its expertise to improve the efficiency and presentation of investigations by maintaining its focus on the ability to recover, receive, analyze, process, and present electronic evidence.  Where practicable, CI should increase its emphasis to secure and preserve digital evidence by initiating the seizure of internet files, and by requesting and facilitating the electronic submission of summonsed or subpoenaed financial records.

Improve Criminal Investigation Information Technology Governance Processes - Criminal Investigation’s Information Technology (IT) offices will continue implementation of industry recognized, professional, time-proven IT investment procedures/processes to plan, develop and implement new technology solutions.  This will help to ensure the products delivered to the field are designed to meet the business needs of the end users. 

Criminal Investigation will use data and research across the organization to make informed decisions and allocate resources that will facilitate the partnering with other bureaus and law enforcement organizations, and where possible, to develop and deploy IT enterprise solutions that enhance efficiency and reduce employee burden.  Criminal Investigation will use advanced IT systems that support international work. 

Criminal Investigation IT projects will continue to report to their appropriate governance bodies (CI Executive Steering Committee/CI Organizational Level Governance Board) for approval of Enterprise Life Cycle milestones exits, to report IT project status, and for issue resolution.  In making IRS the best place to work, Criminal Investigation IT will ensure the privacy and security of employee as well as taxpayer data by providing prompt responses to security challenges and provide responsive service of IT assets to enhance employee satisfaction.

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