Forensics & fraud blog

With the 2012 World Economic Forum in Davos just behind us, Transparency International reflect on some of the evolutions in the global corporate community in terms of transparency, corruption, bribery and perception of people around the world.

TI sees the need for companies to consider new approaches and new business models in light of the persistent global economic woes and ever growing public dis-trust in corporations around the world.

Well worth the read: TI – Corporate Transparency: Old Problems and New Ideas

Belgian businesses are increasingly falling victim to cyber-crime. The trend is revealed by PwC’s ‘Global Economic Crime Survey 2011’. This bi-annual study, now in its sixth edition, in which 3,877 organisations have taken part worldwide, investigates fraud occurring within businesses and other organisations as committed both by staff and by customers and suppliers.

In Belgium, 84 undertakings, including 36 listed companies, participated in the survey. Of the Belgian organisations faced with economic fraud in the past year, no fewer than 44% (23% globally) said that they’d fallen victim to cyber-crime. Misappropriation of assets continues to be the most common form of economic crime here just like elsewhere in the world.

A further striking conclusion from the survey is the great divide between perception and reality: businesses under-estimate their vulnerability and fall victim to economic fraud more often than they imagine. It continues therefore to pose a stubborn problem, and not a single sector is spared. Which is why businesses have to protect themselves better, given that the economic damage being done is enormous. For 1 in 10 companies (worldwide) that were faced with cases of economic fraud in the last 12 months, the losses topped five million dollars.

Please click the following links to see the different reports:

• Global report: http://www.pwc.com/crimesurvey
• Local reports: http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/economic-crime-survey/country-supplements.jhtml

Good risk management at UBS, you say?

The Harvard Business Review seems to thinks not…

HBR: UBS Systems Failed the “Too Big to Fail” Bank

An eye-opening piece on risk management systems at UBS, which permitted this massive fraudulent trading to take place, without ever being detected.
Despite a recent and large scale overhaul and improvement.

Sort of makes you think, doesn’t it?

UK Bribery Act: the British act against corruption is not something that Belgian business can just ignore.

UK Bribery Act press release PwC

The Bribery Act 2010 received Royal Assent on 8 April 2010 and came into force on 1 July 2011.  In addition to the two offences of active and passive bribery (paying and receiving bribes respectively), two specific offences are covered:

• Bribery of an overseas public official; and
• A corporate offence of ‘failure to prevent’ bribery.

With the Bribery Act the UK has one of the strictest anti-bribery regimes in the world and its reach is even broader than the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

What do you need to do?

As the Bribery Act will have implication for all businesses that are incorporated in the UK and for the businesses that carry on all or part of their business in the UK, it is of utmost importance to have a fully integrated and effective anti-corruption program.

In many ways the introduction of the Bribery Act could require a fundamental reassessment of the risks that a company is running and how those risks are addressed.

We have created this blog as a forum to share views and knowledge and also to stimulate debate.

You will see a range of views expressed from different experts in PwC about various fraud related topics such as fraud, corruption, software license infringements, or business ethics issues.  Some of the blog entries will be about providing information to you, in others we may be asking for your views.  You will be able to respond directly to the author if you wish to do so. Please note that members’ responses will be published on the blog.