Survey: Corporate crime increasing

Jul 30, 2003 12:00 PM

Corporate crime is on the rise, but many companies lack the defenses to fight it, discover fraud by accident, and cannot measure the cost of it, according to a new survey by consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers.

In July, the consulting firm surveyed about 3,600 companies from 50 different countries. They discovered that corporate crimes come in many forms, from theft to product copying and computer fraud.

The report, "Economic Crime Survey 2003," states that corruption and bribery occur most in "the developing markets of Africa, South and Central America, and Asis-Pacific...in these regions such acts are often viewed as an acceptable element of doing business."

Companies with more than 1,000 employees are more at risk than smaller ones to be victims of corporate crime, but most often have better defenses to combat it. Big companies encounter more crime because authority is dispersed, they seek business in unfamiliar markets and they offer more opportunities for fraudulent collusion by staff.

Of the 3,600 companies that responded to the survey, 1,284 said they had suffered losses from economic crime in the last two years, with a third of victims unable to guess how much it cost them. The survey found the average cost for companies who did know was $2,199,930.

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