Biographie de Freud (document en anglais)

Fraud is defined to be "an intentional perversion of truth" or a "false misrepresentation of a matter of fact" which induces another person to "part with some valuable thing belonging to him or to surrender a legal right."

In addition to the traditional criminal definition of fraud, there are many regulatory laws that have very specific rules that must be complied with. If you do not follow these rules to the letter, you could be charged with and convicted of fraud.

Federal Securities Law cover a broad scope of possible types of fraud. Fraud is not limited to the selling of bogus securities. Securities fraud also involves the sale of legitimate securities for illegal purposes. The laws also make "insider trading" illegal. "Insider trading" generally refers to the purchasing or selling of securities of a company while in possession of material information that has not been generally disclosed in the marketplace. (See our Securities Law section for further information.)

Fraud is a big subject: too big for a single newsletter to cover. Therefore the subject has been split into manageable pieces. This first part concerns identifying the types of fraud. Subsequent parts, to be published in the next months' newsletters, will discuss detection and prevention of fraud.

In a UK company the responsibility for the security and protection of business assets rests with the board of directors. It is they who are responsible to the shareholders for assessing the risk and identifying the controls that should be put in place to prevent fraud. But detection of fraud is made more difficult by today's modern business practices where transactions are processed remotely and electronically and operations are geographically separated from each other.

Fraud can be perpetrated by many groups: third parties, a company's employees, the company's management, suppliers or customers. Because of the risk of embarrassment and resulting reduction in the level of customer or shareholder confidence, much fraud is not reported. Consequently it is difficult to estimate the losses to business caused by fraud, but it is estimated as several hundred million pounds each year in UK alone. And of the reported frauds, a majority of the worst kind are committed by a company's own employees or managers.

The start of any programme to prevent fraud is first to identify the types of fraud, then to identify the risks of it happening in a particular organisation and next to devise control procedures to prevent it or detect it.

False accounting

• Obtaining external financing by falsely improving the results

• Raising the share price by false means to aid acquisitions or to help a new issue of shares

• Obtaining more business by appearing more successful or less indebted

• Obtaining performance bonuses for managers by inflating profits.

• Covering up internal theft by altering, adding, falsifying or deleting bank/stock/purchase or other records

• Hiding losses in the hopes that fortunes may reverse

Internal Theft

• Direct theft of cash, stock or assets

• Theft of intellectual property - customer lists, contract prices etc.

• False expense claims

• Payroll fraud - payments to ex-employees

Usually internal Third-party

• Customers

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