Covid-19 related fraud risks were discussed at a virtual event organised by the Institute of Internal Auditors Qatar chapter recently.
More than 100 auditors participated in the event.
One of the presenters Dr Sridhar Ramamoorti is a Professor at the University of Dayton, US, and is specialised in risk advisory services, fraud risk detection. Dr Ramamoorti was 2010 co-chair of the IIA’s global CBOK study and a co-author of internal auditing textbook.
The other presenter Victor Hartman is an attorney, CPA, and former FBI Special Agent, who specialises in internal investigations, forensic accounting, and fraud mitigation consulting. Hartman is also a Professor at Georgia State University. He is the author of the book, The honest truth about fraud.
Fraud life cycle consisting of prevention, detection, investigation, mitigation and remediation were elucidated by Hartman to point out how internal audit can play a crucial role in different phases.
Fraud risk definition, taxonomy (fraud tree), threat picture broadly forms corruption, assets misappropriation and financial statement fraud and its plethora of areas with the scarcity of skills to detect were explained for internal auditors to scale up.
The Covid19 related frauds were identified primarily as procurement fraud, advance fee scheme, business e-mail compromise (BEC), bogus medical products, substandard medical products & equipment (PPE), government assistance programme fraud, hoarding & price gouging, repurposed frauds, frauds to gain personally identifiable information (PII) and charity schemes.
There is a high vulnerability with ‘Work from home’ situation.
“Greed is not a G-word’ said Dr Ramamoorti, as he explained why do people commit fraud. Affects (innate emotions), peeling the onion (layers), business need, ego, excitement, parity, reciprocity, status, slippery slope were identified as the main motivators for fraud.
“According to the ACFE 2020 Report to the Nations global survey, internal auditors worldwide are the true heroes in the fight against fraud! The survey estimates fraud $4.3tn, which is mind-boggling. Fraud mitigation measures should be aligned to motivators of fraud by consciously learning from case studies, research and talks. The stakeholder’s expectations from internal auditors is huge” said Sundaresan Rajeswar, IIA Qatar Board Member.
Fahad Hussien, senior vice president, IIA Qatar, welcomed attendees from different parts of the world and emphasised members to attend such sessions to enhance their knowledge and bring out changes in their work.
Girish Jain hosted the event with Murtaza and Muralikrishna. Rajeswar handled the Q&A segment.
