A recent survey reveals the dark side of the corporate India, the growing number of white collar crimes committed every year. KPMG India, an audit and consulting firm associated with its Swiss Cooperative, KPMG International, has published its recent Fraudster Survey 2007. The findings were collected from a questionnaire survey sent out on October 2007 to India’s largest organization in public and private sectors. The respondents included senior management officials.

Greed, opportunity and pressures to meet budgets and targets are the most overriding motivations for white-collar crimes. Surprisingly, most of the crimes were committed by senior level officials; 86% of the fraudsters held management positions of which 60% were either at senior management level or in the board of directors. Of these 68% of the profilers were acting independently and they were not satisfied with one time act, but 91% of the fraudsters had repeatedly cheated their company.

The number of years with the company didn’t have a positive effect either; about 26% of the employees had been 3-5 years in the company, 29% of them 6-10 years, 22% less than 10 years, while only 1% had been less than a year employed.

89% of the perpetrators were internal people, while only 20% of them were externally associated with the company.

The survey highlights the count of crimes since last year has risen from 39% to 60%. It states lack of effective monitoring and fraud risk management programs as the driving factors for the rise in white collar crimes.

Source: Newstrack India