Global Economic Crime Survey 2011

PwC has issued its 2011 Global Economic Crime Survey: Middle East Report.  The survey gathered information from 126 respondents from Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and the West Bank Region. Respondents included C-suite executives, senior vice presidents and heads of departments. 26 percent of respondents represented listed companies and 25 percent represented government organisations and state owned enterprises. 42 percent of respondents represented organisations with more than 1,000 employees.
 

The findings in this survey come from these respondents reporting their experiences of economic crimes in their organisations. The survey gathered information on the different types of economic crime, their impacts (both financial loss and collateral damage), the perpetrators of these crimes, what action the organisation took and how they responded to the crime.
 

Below are some of the highlights from the results of the survey:

  • The organisations of 28% of respondents experienced economic crime in the last 12 months
  • Asset misappropriation, bribery and corruption, cybercrime and accounting fraud were the most common types of fraud reported
  • Fraud in the Middle East is most commonly detected by accident
  • 40% of the respondents whose organisations reported economic crime had instances of cybercrime
  • Almost half of Middle East respondents who reported fraud indicated that their organisations suffered financial losses in the range of USD 100,001 and USD 5 million and 14% indicated that the financial loss exceeded USD 5 million
  • Respondents in the Middle East expect their organisations to experience an increased level of economic crime, with almost 39% projecting incidents of bribery and corruption in the next 12 months. This is more than 50% higher than the global average of 23%

Download the full report for more interesting findings.