Resistance to fraud and corruption – the ultimate goal

“What a dry subject”, “not another accountant with a checklist”, “when will these people stop talking and actually do something instead?” These were comments, writes Nigel Iyer of Hibis Group, which I heard people murmuring before I started the seminar, so I realised that I had a sceptical audience of financial, risk and human resource managers in front of me. However, after each session on preventing fraud and corruption, the audience seemed pleasantly surprised and also motivated. Why this was the case only dawned on me on the flight home from the USA. They had come to the seminar weary of newspaper stories about fraud, corruption and mindless greed; stories which had been succeeded by tidal waves of legalisation and regulation. In their minds, any hope that they, personally, could have an effect on reducing fraud and corruption had faded away because the lawyers and bureaucrats had taken charge…

Nigel Iyer ACA works with organisations to tackle fraud and corruption, especially through prevention. He is a director in the Hibis Group (www.hibis.com) and may be contacted on email at nigel.iyer@hibis.com. His book “Preventing Fraud and Corruption”, co-authored with Martin Samociuk is due to be published by Gower in May 2006.

Coincidentally, in the same week, a leader in an American national broadsheet stated that “companies are realising that it costs less to prevent than to cure”. The same article went on to describe how people follow suit when the senior management behave dishonestly, and implied that in spite of all the new laws, little focus is given to the prevention and detection of fraud and corruption at the top of organisations. Up until then I had thought that this was fairly obvious.