White Collar Fraud

White collar fraud otherwise known as occupational fraud and abuse can affect any business from an SME through to a large multi-national company. All it takes is one person within the business to use their position for personal enrichment through the deliberate misuse or misappropriation of company resources or assets1 for the business to be a victim of fraud.

The difficulty arises in discovering fraud before it escalates to a level that could jeopardise the on-going viability of the business. This occurred to a client recently as a result of their finance administration manager completing and lodging the company's quarterly business activity statement to the Australian Taxation Office ("ATO") reporting the GST liability and PAYG tax obligations and remitting the GST payable but diverting the payment for PAYG tax to his personal bank account. He managed to conceal his fraudulent behaviour for fifteen