Fraud down in most African countries

Companies operating in Africa are at less risk of being defrauded than they were a year ago, according to the third KPMG Africa Fraud Barometer. It shows an overall decrease in reported fraud from 503 in the first half of 2012 to 348 cases in the second half. “The number of incidences has again shown a marginal decline,” says Petrus Marais, KPMG’s global leader of forensics, who developed the barometer. Most fraud is committed by employees (22%), replacing government officials (14%) previously topping the list. These results suggest that there is a high level of internal dishonesty. As in the previous reporting period, government remains hardest hit by fraud and corruption at 30%, a decrease of 8% from the previous reporting period. “I think that we can already pick up various trends. Certain types of offences of dishonesty remain dominant, such as general fraud and misrepresentation. We have noted the same in the category of offenders, where employees and government officials are dominant,” says Marais. “In Africa, an increasing number of countries have been introducing anticorruption legislation. “While it is too early to predict the long-term impact of this, we also see multinational corporations taking corruption a lot more seriously, which may also be contributing to the positive results we are seeing.”