The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the fraud calculus in favour of fraudsters. Post-pandemic, when the world settles into its new, socially-distanced, remote-working ‘normal’, fraud fighters everywhere expect to be playing catch-up as they face a wave of crisis-related frauds, says the Fraud Advisory Panel.
On Brexit, it says that it shares ‘the widespread concern that the fight on fraud will suffer if the UK leaves the EU without an efficient mechanism for criminal justice and security cooperation’. That’s part of the charity and awareness raising body’s review of the year.
At first recall, 2019 may not look much like a vintage year for fraud fighters, it says. In fact it brought significant fraud and economic crime-related developments. Among them was a slow but welcome ratcheting-up of government and law enforcement interest in fraud, including the first national economic crime plan since the heady days of the 2006 Fraud Review, according to the 20-page document.
Long-standing thorns in the side of fraud fighters – lack of a plan to tackle economic crime, the UK’s patchy AML (anti-money laundering) defences, the vulnerability to fraud of our incorporation regime, the infuriating ease with which pensions and investment scammers ply their trade, and the unfairness with which the banks respond to push payment fraud – all seemed at last to have caught the eye of a new government, the report said.
“The vulnerability to abuse of the Companies House regime (about which we have campaigned for many years) also seemed to have broken into government thinking. The SFO [Serious Fraud Office] continued to conclude successful deferred prosecution agreements (though still without converting any of them into individual prosecutions). And even the consumer arena – namely, pensions, investment and authorised push payment fraud – was attracting much-needed official attention. Indeed, the year closed with some cause for optimism that 2020 might see steady progress in the anti-fraud arena and no particular reason to think that our world – the world – was about to be turned upside down.”
As for money laundering, the report raised concerns over the UK Government’s ‘continued preference for putting the cart (the need to crack down on laundering of the proceeds of economic crimes) before the horse (tackling the crimes themselves)’. A fourth charity fraud awareness week in October brought together regulators, law enforcers, charities and professional advisers from the UK and other countries. A study by the sector regulator the Charity Commission and the Fraud Advisory Panel found that almost half of UK charities still have no ‘good practice’ fraud protections in place.
The Panel promises a further report on ‘new and heightened fraud risks that flow from the Covid-19 pandemic and the social, psychological and commercial changes it has forced on us’.
Instead of the usual physical gathering in London, the Panel’s Annual General Meeting will be held online at 9am on Wednesday, July 22 by Lifesize video conference. An annual lecture by film-maker Chris Akins is a ‘personal account of life behind bars as a fraudster’.
Visit https://www.fraudadvisorypanel.org/.
