Mumbai: India leads globally in the number of incidents of corporate fraud with as many as 80 per cent of executives admitting being victims of such crime, which are mostly insider activities, says a report by Kroll.
Against this, globally 75 per cent of the companies have fallen victim to frauds in the past year, a rise of 14 percentage points in just three years, said the report.
The findings also revealed that the biggest fraud threats come from within the companies. Of those companies where fraud occurred and the perpetrator was identified, 81 per cent suffered at the hands of at least one insider, up from 72 per cent in the previous survey.
“As many as 80 per cent of the executives, who responded to the survey from the country were affected by fraud. This marked an 11 per cent increase since the last report,” says the report.
“Of all the countries surveyed, India had the highest incidence of fraud in four categories–corruption and bribery (25 per cent), regulatory compliance breach (20 per cent), IP theft (15 per cent) and money laundering (7.5 per cent).
Further, 92 per cent of domestic respondents have confirmed that their firms have seen an increased exposure to fraud in the last year.
The domestic executives also say their companies are particularly at risk of threats such as vendor, supplier or procurement fraud, with 49 per cent feeling highly vulnerable to such incidents.
The global survey was carried out by the Economist Intelligence Unit for Kroll. Survey results were gathered between January and March 2015 from among 768 senior executives from financial services, professional services, retail and wholesale, technology, media and telecoms, healthcare and pharma, travel, leisure and transportation, engineering and manufacturing among others.