South African organisations continue to report the highest instances of economic crime in the world with the scourge reaching its highest level over the past decade, accounting firm PwC said in its biennial Global Economic Crime Survey on Tuesday.
PwC said South Africa's rate of reported economic crime, at 77 percent, was significantly higher than the global average rate of 49 percent, with Kenya coming second at 75 percent while France was third at 71 percent.
Asset misappropriation remained the most prevalent form of economic crime reported by 45 percent of respondents globally and 49 percent of South African respondents, the report said.
One of the new categories of economic crimes was 'fraud committed by the consumer', which was the second most reported crime in South Africa at 42 percent and was third placed globally at 29 percent.
The survey examined over 7 200 respondents from 123 countries, 282 of them from South Africa.
"Economic crime continues to disrupt business, with this year’s results showing a steep incline in reported instances of economic crime," said Trevor White, a partner at PwC.
"We believe that these jumps in reported crime are being driven by a heightened state of fraud awareness by respondents, and in this lies the silver lining."
PwC said while instances of reported cybercrime showed a small decrease in South Africa at 29 percent in 2018 versus 32 percent in 2016, it retained its second place in the global rankings.
Accounting fraud, usually perpetrated by senior management and resulting in the largest losses, increased from 20 percent to 22 percent.
Another notable form of economic crime in South Africa was procurement fraud, indicating that the entire supply chain was fraught with criminality.
"When combined with the high instances of bribery and corruption reported (affecting more than a third of organisations at 34 percent), the resultant erosion in value from the country’s gross domestic product is startling," said PwC.
