If you are going to a Fraud Advisory Panel half-day seminar on ‘Employment fraud: The Human Dimension’, be sure you don’t diddle your expenses – because fraudulent expenses claims are one of the event topics.
This Fraud Advisory Panel seminar will address several of the ‘people’ issues surrounding fraud risk management. Speakers include Detective Inspector Mark Salt of West Midlands Police), David Vine of GlobalExpense, Peter Norbury of law firm Eversheds, Celia Nicholson of Northampton-based business consultancy Nicholson Consulting, and Simon Dwyer of audit firm KPMG.
The October 23 event runs from 1pm. The venue is KPMG LLP, 2 Cornwall Street, Birmingham, West Midlands, B3 2DL. Cost is £70 plus VAT to Fraud Advisory Panel members; £100 plus VAT to non-FAP-members
For details email [email protected]
Exes background
Corporate expense policies are being widely and routinely ignored, according to GlobalExpense. Around 12 percent of all employee expense claims are outside of their organisation’s corporate policy, yet only half a percent of claims are rejected by managers, GlobalExpense claims. Nearly a quarter of hotel bill claims are not within corporate policy, nor are nearly one-in-six entertainment claims.
Examples of bogus expense claims include a visit to strip club, Hooters, in the USA and the purchase of 20 Bibles, both claimed under the client entertainment category. One chancer submitted his betting slip as a receipt. Hair-cuts and, curiously, airplane fuel have also been claimed.
“Companies and organisations are literally throwing away money hand over fist by failing to properly check employee expense claims,” said David Vine, managing director of GlobalExpense. “Not all out-of-policy expenses are phony, it may be that an employee has overstepped the spending limit by one pound or failed to produce a valid receipt. But expenses is an area where both public figures and working professionals can forget their ethics. I overheard a group of management consultants at a London business hotel discuss how to fiddle their expenses to pay for a round of drinks at the bar. It was decided that one of the individuals would submit a bogus mileage claim to cover the cost!
“Employee expenses is the current Achilles’ heel for businesses and organisations,’ added Vine. ‘A lax attitude to employee expenses can result in public scandal and damage the reputations of individual directors as well as that of their organisations. Recent scalps include Members of Parliament, members of the House of Lords, the Auditor General and the Metropolitan Police.”
