Fraud Around The World
PricewaterhouseCoopers has published its 2009 Global Economic Crime Survey, based on reports from more than 3,000 corporate executives in 54 countries. The Survey is being widely reported, and considerable detail, including country-by-country reports, is available on the PWC website. My objective is to highlight which countries have the most, and least, business fraud – from the perspective of each country’s own executives. This gives you an idea of how, say, Russian or Singaporean executives view fraud in their own countries – based on their own reporting to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
2009 Global Economic Crime Survey
Let’s begin with the bad news. Russia is the worst, with 71% of Russian respondents reporting economic crimes. They are followed by South Africa (62% reporting fraud), Kenya (57%), Canada (56%!), Mexico (51%), Ukraine (45%), United Kingdom (43%), New Zealand (42%) and Australia (40%). Some surprising numbers, especially for Canada. Do executives in these countries share the same definition of fraud? I suspect that Canadian executives are using a higher standard than might be prevalent in the Ukraine. And one wonders at the absence of the obvious suspects, such as Nigeria, Indonesia, Pakistan and China. Did PWC simply not receive sufficient responses from these countries?
On the plus side, Japanese respondents see themselves as the least subject to corporate fraud (10%). Next best are Hong Kong (13%), Turkey and the Netherlands (tied at 15%), Romania (16%), Finland and Switzerland (even at 17%), Indonesia (ah, here they are: only 18%), India and Singapore (also 18%), Sweden and Italy (19%). Again, I think we are dealing with different subjective standards of what constitutes fraud and economic crime. Is there really less fraud in Romania than in Singapore? Lee Kuan Yew will not be pleased!
