If a firm suspects that an employee is carrying out criminal activities, i.e embezzlement and they report the case to the police that has its own Computer forensic department.
My question is, in such a case wher e the police are informed first, does it give their Computer Forensic department automatic rights to take over the case or can the firm hire a private Computer Forensic Company to do the Forensic Investigation?
Not sure about the laws in Namibia, but in the US as long as you do not interfere with the criminal investigation other investigations on the civil side are quite typical.
South Africa and Namibia have similar legal systems, and although the advice I am providing would be specific to South Africa, I am sure that it will be similar in Namibia.
Once a complainant has reported a matter to a law enforcement agency that has jurisdiction, they would be in a position to do the computer forensic investigation, the question is whether or not they simply seize the computer and examine it off site, or whether or not they image it on site and examine the image off site. If the computer has been seized by the police, you would have difficulty in getting them to be examined by a private company. If they left the computer in place, then a private company could examine the computer without interfering with the police investigation.
There is nothing in law which prevents a private investigation running parallel to a police investigation, so long as it does not interfere. In fact, due to the critical shortage of computer forensic professionals in South Africa, most police investigations are only to happy to have assistance, provided of course the the private computer forensic examiners are qualified to act as such. There are a lot of people who claim to be computer forensics professionals in South Africa, and most have only done product specfic courses which would not necessarily equip then to testify as experts in court.
If you need any further advice, feel free to contact me.