Kroll Global Fraud Report - April 2010

Corruption and anti-corruption: Raising the stakes

In 2009, Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer found that 69 percent of worldwide respondents believed that their national political parties were corrupt and 61 percent said the same for legislatures. Political parties and civil servants were listed as the most corrupt institutions within society. Read more.

"Just when you thought it was safe to go back
in the water..."

You have carefully designed your Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) compliance program, making sure that all staff know their obligations under the law; then you hear that the new UK Bribery Bill has a different set of restrictions. Read more.

Italian style fraud: Conflict of interest as
common practice

Few might be surprised to learn that fraud in the shipping industry differs dramatically from a financial sector scam. Nobody would expect a logistics company to be hit by a Ponzi scheme and banks rarely suffer from excessive inventory scrap. But would a fraud in France typically differ from one in Italy? Surprisingly, yes. Read more.

The relationship between public and private
sector fraud

Working on fraud and corruption investigations, Kroll has seen that the private sector in most countries is a reflection of the public sector. Legislation, legal safeguards, and especially control of public corruption define how the private sector deals with the issue. Read more.

Fraud and D&O Liability Insurance

The current economic climate is exposing firms to an increased risk of fraud and corruption. Frequently, when fraud does occur, senior managers are left facing the fallout. Companies which have not traditionally considered fraud to be an area of particular risk now face a different reality. In hard economic times, senior managers in every organization need to understand that such crime is increasingly likely to occur internally. Read more.

Germany's stronger anti-corruption enforcement

For years, German commentators have written about the roles bribery and corruption play in business transactions. Estimates suggest that German companies pay a collective total of US$33 billion in bribes abroad annually, much of which goes unaccounted for and unpunished. Recently, however, anticorruption enforcement efforts have become front page news. Read more.

Fraud at the breakfast table: A recipe for confronting product adulteration in agribusiness

Humans need food to survive. Businesses that produce food touch the lives of billions of people and generate billions of dollars in annual revenue. Yet despite – or perhaps because of – their key role in the global economy, agribusinesses can be vulnerable to fraud in the form of product adulteration. Read more.

The FCPA landscape has changed: Trends in enforcement

On 18 January 2010, 22 business executives were arrested and over 100 FBI agents conducted related searches. These actions were based on sealed federal indictments handed down by a grand jury several weeks earlier, which in turn stemmed from a two-and-a-half year undercover operation. The indictments claimed that the defendants believed that they were involved in a scheme to acquire a US$15 million defense contract to outfit the presidential guard of an unnamed country. Read more.

Fraud in bankruptcy in the USA

Businesses are filing for bankruptcy at a record pace: in the United States corporate bankruptcies were up nearly 35 percent in 2009 after rising 30 percent the year before. More bankruptcies will likely lead to more instances of bankruptcy fraud. Read more.

How to survive and thrive in corrupt markets

The United States government has made the fight against corruption a top priority in recent years by reviving and reinforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). President Barack Obama, in a speech at the WTO negotiations in Doha in February 2010, pledged that the country would lead the way in this struggle and asked for the collaboration of all world leaders. The US administration recognizes that corruption undermines economic opportunity and sustainable development in emerging markets. Read more.

The ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement: An IP protection challenge for everyone

In January 2010 the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (FTA) came into effect. It eliminates barriers to investment and tariffs on 90 percent of products between China and the sixASEAN countries – Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Although the negotiations took years, one key area which the agreement still overlooks is the protection of intellectual property (IP). Read more.