Deloitte recently conducted a survey named The Middle East Fraud Survey Report. This survey is conducted by the conglomerate every 10 years and intends to study the trends of financial fraud across various industries. Do you know, in the Middle East, financial advisory fraud in Dubai is at an increase over the past few years?

The Middle East Fraud Survey Report unearthed the fraud trends by asking crucial questions to respondents based across different industries.

Collin Keeney, Forensics Partner at the Deloitte group spoke to me about unravelling the fraud trends that prevail in the market today.

h an interesting statistic, 2022 witnessed 48% more frauds than the preceding year, 2021. 35% of the respondents think the fraud cases have increased since the COVID-19 pandemic. Diving deeper, Collin reveals that two third of the respondents feel that the fraud risk in their organisation is only going to increase due to the current business & economic disruptions.

Cyber theft, financial advisory fraud in Dubai, procurement and inside dealing are some of the frauds that are prevalent in the region.

This makes one think, is anybody doing something about it? Answering the question Collin says, many businesses in Dubai are trying to tackle this issue by implementing whistleblower lines or through internal audits. However, the process stops there. While people take action to identify the problem, little to none take action to solve it. To back this up in number, The Middle East Fraud Survey reports 75% of respondents agreed to the existence of whistleblower lines. However, 33% of the same also reported that the whistleblower lines were ineffective.

If scams are on the rise, how do you enable the great fraud fightback?

Protecting your organisation from fraudsters is very important. There are a few crucial things that you must keep in mind if you want to secure your business against such frauds:

• Work culture

Develop a work culture that shows that there is zero tolerance for scams in the organisation, whether you are a C-level employee or an intern. Here one thing is important to keep in mind: if your top level employees start bending rules, the others will follow. Hence, ensure that the top management of your company follows the work culture that you develop.

• Lay out specific rules

Lay out a specific set of rules that dictate how an employee should take decisions when the situation involves money or anything other asset that is more important to your company. Also, it is better to pre-decide the course of action that you will take if someone does commit fraud in the organisation. Keep the rules simple and ensure that all of your employees know what to do when a tricky situation arises.

But what causes these scams? What is the root cause?

If you are mugged, the legal treatment to your case is different from the other person who is a victim of a financial advisory fraud in Dubai. In essence, there are grey areas when it comes to financial services which are easier to explore due to the lack of stricter laws.

Listen to a fascinating podcast with Collin here on the Expats in Dubai show.