All organizations are permanently exposed to the risk of fraud and the task of its administrators to prevent it. It is common that managers in attempting to manage risks become csingle to accounting controls and procedures, and not consider specific fraud risks faced by the Organization’s key processes. Accounting controls and procedures can give a false sense of security. Fraudsters are opportunists who take advantage of temporary weaknesses or the unnoticed gaps between the apparent strength and the real effectiveness of the controls. It is important to bear in mind that they are persons, and not the processes or information systems, who commit fraud.
Who commit fraud? Fraudsters operate at different levels inside and outside of an organization and in a wide variety of circumstances. The people commit fraud when the pattern matches the opportunity. The reason may be greed, lack of money, resentment and sense of ownership of the stolen or having won. The opportunity to It may occur due to the lack of a real deterrent or to the low probability of being discovered, because there are gaps in policies and procedures. Over time increases the number of people with the potential to commit fraud in an organization, which makes it very important for organizations to create an environment that would prevent fraud. How to combat fraud? Fraud, as the majority of the Organization’s risk, hardly can be removed, however, can manage to limit the damage. It is necessary to continuously transmit a clear message to the Organization’s zero tolerance for fraud and misconduct.
The key is to have a mitigation strategy that deals with risk factors such as those mentioned above. The success of these measures depends on the commitment of the entire organization. As organizations implement progressively stronger controls, fraudsters are lasingenian for designing and using increasingly sophisticated methods of fraud. Therefore the action plans against fraud can not be a timely activity in time. There must be a process of continuous review that allows close gaps and reduce the possibility of these are exploited by fraudsters. We suggest, as a minimum, the implementation of preventive actions:-establish or revise a proper segregation of duties in critical processes. -Define and communicate a code of ethics or conduct that includes follow-up to its compliance activities. -Establish a telephone or electronic line of complaints is frequently promoted, including the tracking of complaints and information that is collected there. -Act timely, proportionate and firm in case of occurring some fraud, running fast and appropriate solutions. -Define rigorous authorization levels, especially of critical transactions. -Establish a suitable physical and computer security. -Where possible, return a habit the rotation of posts. -Define mandatory that employees take holidays for full terms. If you want to extend, without charge, the themes developed in this document, or to obtain an electronic copy of the same, enter original author and source of the article.
