The Romanian equivalent of the American proverb ‘Once a thief, always a thief’ is ‘Who steals an egg today, steals an ox tomorrow" – what a juicy translation.
This is the week is the international fraud awareness week.
Black’s Law Dictionary define “fraud” as any activity that relies on deception in order to achieve a gain; fraud becomes a crime when it is a “knowing misrepresentation of the truth or concealment of a material fact to induce another to act to his or her detriment”. In simple words, if you lie in order to deprive a person or an organization of their money or property, you’re committing fraud.
Examples of fraud in nowadays
ASSET MISAPPROPRIATION
- Have you seen a colleague stealing an organization’s assets (dozens of pens, water packages, coffee packages, end even toilet paper sets)? How embarrassing may be such an act for an observer too?
- Have you seen cases with overstating reimbursable expenses? How many business lunches can you have with 2,000 Euro?
- Have you seen managers using company’s car for family members?
- Have you heard on the case when the CEO of a big company stolen few millions?
If you start with this, what is next?
CORRUPTION
- Have you seen people spending much more that they earn?
- Have you seen people going to holidays that they never would afford from their salaries?
Corruption exists in private companies too: schemes involving persons wrongfully using their influence in a business transaction to obtain a personal benefit or a benefit for another person (e.g., their spouse, children, or friends). Examples of corruption schemes include failing to disclose conflicts of interest, accepting illegal gratuities, and paying bribes for favorable business decisions.
Convictions in Europe? Of course, that there are convictions for corruption in private companies.
FINANCIAL STATEMENT FRAUD
- ‘Sleep peacefully when FNI is watching for you’ – what a cynical marketing slogan! The Romanian business left no less than 300,000 people who were "sleeping peacefully"without money.
- Wirecard scandal involved a series of corrupt business practices and fraudulent financial reporting that led to the insolvency of the company. These are questions about supervisory failure on the part of Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, Germany's top financial watchdog, and possible malpractice of the company’s long time auditor Ernst & Young.
There are clear examples with schemes involving the intentional misreporting of an organization’s financial information with the intent to mislead others.
Other examples include creating fictitious revenues, overvaluing assets for creating a theoretical profit and indirectly obtaining bonuses and additional remuneration by management, concealing liabilities or expenses.
Temptation
Temptation is big, but when you consider cost versus benefits how is balancing?
Maybe it is worth 4 years of criminal cases hearings, more than 100 meetings with lawyers and at least 3 years in prison for a nice holiday on a beautiful place, isn’t it?
As the fraud is sometimes so harmful, for majority of such crimes, the tentative is punished as well.
Reputation
And where the reputation is in this article?
You have only one reputation – if you lose it, you lose it forever, even you still have few cents in your pocket. What about your family? What future your kids have?