Fraud Intelligence

Transparency International (TI) warned that "conflict creates opportunities for corruption and subverts governments' efforts to stop it" as it unveiled its 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) [1] on 31 January [2022]: 180 countries were scored on perceived levels of public sector corruption from 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean), with the average 43.

A British parliamentary committee has found that victims of authorised push payment (APP) fraud - where people are tricked into paying fake creditors - face inconsistencies in reimbursement, even when their banks are signed up to the voluntary contingent reimbursement model (CRM) code.

The comprehensive and thus far sustained extension of home-based working sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic has fuelled a growing market in surveillance devices to help managers ensure their employees are working rather than shirking. Keith Nuthallstops surfing the Net, after a call from FI, to check out the latest in Big Brother tech.

The UK government has paid the European Union (EU) €2.6 billion (US$2.8 billion or UK£2.3 billion) to cover pre-Brexit losses on customs and VAT fraud, between 2011 and 2017, that it failed to stop, meaning it underpaid contributions to the bloc's budget.

Now accounting for 41% of all criminal offences in England and Wales, fraud features, for the first time under its own head, in the latest version of the Strategic Policing Requirement, which sets priorities for chief constables and police and crime commissioners; it was last updated in 2015.

The combined value of major fraud cases over UK£100,000 (US$120,428) tried in United Kingdom Crown Courts rose 151% in a year, from UK£444.7 million (US$535.49 million) in 2021 to UK£1.12 billion (US$1.35 billion) in 2022, returning to pre-pandemic levels, according to the KPMG Fraud Barometer.