Fourteen delegates from various companies from the South Pacific islands attended a three-day fraud and corruption workshop in Suva last week.
The forum organised by the International Business and Economic Forum (IBE Forum), saw the participants discussing and learning all aspects of fraud and corruption, from traditional fraud schemes such as money laundering, asset theft, payroll fraud, to trends like electronic fraud and the use of AI (artificial intelligence) for fraudulent schemes.
Course facilitator Simon Padgett said during the three-day course, participants had the opportunity to learn about various types of fraud and corruption together with its prevention and investigation techniques.
“These people are all here to learn how to investigate fraud and corruption in their businesses and in their government departments, and how to prevent it,” Mr Padgett, a forensic accountant from Forensic integrity Consulting and Training, said.
“There are different investigation processes and we’ve been discussing those investigation processes.
“In investigating fraud and corruption, there are investigating invoices that are used to deceive companies, investigating tender fraud, investigating sales fraud, some people even perpetrate payroll fraud.
“So, we do trainings on them. We’ve got videos to show the delegates and we work through case studies as well.
Participants were also trained on how to reduce the risk of fraud in their organisation and fraud risk assessing.
“We’ve been looking at fraud hotlines which is whistleblower channels. We’ve been looking at fraud policies and codes of conduct and also bribery and corruption and how to identify that in your organisation,”Mr Padgett said.
Amalgamated Telecom Holdings (ATH) accountant George Rounds said he was fortunate to attend such an important forum.
“So far, we have learnt about the three major types of fraud, the biggest one being financial statement fraud and corruption,” he said.
“I was sent here to learn more about risk and corruption because recently I have been introduced to the risk team.
He said the training was not limited to just fraud, as they also talked about cybersecurity, as well as the introduction of AI into the economy.
