Survey lists biggest economic crimes in PH

ASSET misappropriation, bribery and corruption, as well as customer fraud are among the biggest economic crimes in the Philippines.

This is according to Alex Tan, PwC Malaysia’s partner for forensics services and risk consulting leader, who discussed “PwC’s Global Economic Crime and Fraud Survey — The Philippine Report” during the Management Association of the Philippines’ 5th online general membership meeting on Tuesday.

“What are the top frauds in the Philippines? Asset misappropriation, which is another word of stealing the money. Bribery and corruption and then lastly customer fraud,“ he said.

According to the survey, asset misappropriation fraud continues to be the most disruptive to Philippine businesses, with at least 26 percent or one out of four businesses having experienced it since 2018.

Meanwhile, bribery and corruption picked up again over the last 24 months to 21 percent in 2020 from 18 percent in 2018 but lower than 25 percent in 2016.

While Tan did not provide the survey results for customer fraud, he noted that this type of fraud was increasing, especially during this Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic.

“That is fraud committed by your customers by you and it could also be in collusion with your staff members or so forth,” Tan said.

“And when we looked at what sort of level in the organization committed the fraud for the Philippines, it was primarily middle management,” he added.

The survey pointed out that internal perpetrators are mostly from middle management and to some extent, operations staff. It said “middle management, to a certain degree, may have more fraud opportunities than both senior management and operational staff. At the same time, the pressure coming from above and below can motivate them to commit fraud.”