Study: Economic crime up 60 percent

THE NUMBER of economic crime cases in Slovakia has grown by 60 percent since 2011, with roughly one-third of Slovak companies having their own experience with such fraud over the past two years, according to the results of a survey carried out by PwC on 76 Slovak companies in autumn 2013. In previous survey carried out in 2011 only 21 percent of the surveyed businesses indicated that they had experienced economic crime within the past 24 months, the TASR newswire reported on March 6.

THE NUMBER of economic crime cases in Slovakia has grown by 60 percent since 2011, with roughly one-third of Slovak companies having their own experience with such fraud over the past two years, according to the results of a survey carried out by PwC on 76 Slovak companies in autumn 2013. In previous survey carried out in 2011 only 21 percent of the surveyed businesses indicated that they had experienced economic crime within the past 24 months, the TASR newswire reported on March 6.

The most frequent economic crime cases involved asset misappropriation (with 54 percent of the respondents labelling this as the biggest problem), corruption and bribery (31 percent), procurement fraud (31 percent), mortgage fraud (19 percent), cyber-crime (12 percent) and money-laundering (12 percent).

PwC Director of Forensic Services Michal Kohoutek said that economic crime is financially demanding for Slovak businesses. As the survey indicated, more than 58 percent of the responding enterprises suffered from economic crime, estimating the resulting direct financial losses at no less than €72,800 per firm. For another 8 percent of the companies the losses amounted to at least €3.6 million.

“There are also indirect losses such as damaged reputations, violation of business relations, loss of trust in company leaders and the influence on employees’ morals,” Kohoutek said, as quoted by TASR.

The survey showed that 27 percent of all economic crimes were revealed via the company’s system of fraud risk management, while 14 percent was detected only by accident, TASR wrote.

Source: TASR

Compiled by Radka Minarechová from press reports

The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.

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