ACFE stresses on technology for detecting financial crime

Muscat: Technology is the number one influencer on detecting financial crime promptly by using intelligence to identify unusual trends said Aziz Mahdi, Head of Compliance, Standard Chartered Bank.
“One has to invest in technology that is linked to an entity’s account ledger in order to detect unusual transactions at source, rather than conducting an investigation once the transaction has cleared the SWIFT system,” he said.
Aziz was speaking at the Seminar on Financial Crime Control-Challenges and opportunities, hosted by The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), Oman Chapter at The College of Banking and Financial Studies, on Tuesday.
“Public-private sector collaboration remains pivotal in the sense that financial crime can be disrupted if the private sector can work with law enforcement to ensure that bad actors are identified swiftly and removed from the financial system globally,” Aziz said.
“In Oman, there has been a lot of good work around the anti money laundering law (AML), particularly the AML 30/2016 Royal Decree that was issued a couple of years back. Efforts to address money laundering, sanctions, bribery and corruption is evident and this is increasingly important as we move towards the 2020 FATF mutual evaluation” he added.
Earlier welcoming the participants at the conference, Davis Kallukaran the President of the Oman Chapter of ACFE said that the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners in its 10th annual report to the nations released last week, revealed that a typical organisation loses 5 per cent of its revenue in a given year as a result of fraud.
He said that 2,690 occupational fraud cases were examined by more than 2,000 Certified Fraud Examiners (CFEs) from January 2016 to October 2017 across 125 countries. It was found out that the total loss to these organisations alone on account of fraud exceeded $7 billion.
“If we apply this percentage of 5 per cent on the world gross domestic product (GDP) of $76.9 trillion the loss on account of fraud to the world can be estimated at $4 trillion in a year,” he added.
From embezzlement to fraud the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners are the best resource for insight into why these frauds occur,Together with more than 80,000 members, CFE’s are reducing business Fraud worldwide.
Headquartered in Texas, United States, the ACFE was founded in 1988 by preeminent fraud expert and author, Dr Joseph T. Wells, CFE, CPA, whose insight as an accountant-turned-FBI agent led to the formation of a common body of knowledge known today as Fraud examination.
The event was held under the patronage of Nasser Abdulla Al Reyami, Assistant Attorney General and was attended by over hundred professionals from the ROP, State audit, CMA, financial institutions, banks and colleges. The Chief Public Prosecutor Nasser Khamis Al Sawai also attended the event.