Bribery and corruption still rife, finds EY global survey

EY’s 13th Global Fraud Survey, Overcoming compliance fatigue: reinforcing the commitment to ethical growth, has found concerning levels of perceived fraud, bribery and corruption across the world.

The survey included in-depth interviews with more than 2,700 executives across 59 countries, including chief financial officers, chief compliance officers, general counsel and heads of internal audit. Nearly 40% of all respondents believe that bribery and corruption are widespread in their country.

With respondents portraying a business environment of pervasive corruption in many countries, it would appear that management and boards are struggling to respond to long-standing threats, let alone addressing emerging risks such as cybercrime.

David Stulb, Global Leader of EY’s Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services (FIDS) practice says, “With high-profile cybercrime incidents making headlines on a regular basis, boards should expect management to have a robust incident response strategy in place. Pressure on companies for timely disclosure of breaches is rising in many jurisdictions as well, so these issues require attention from the legal and compliance functions. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is increasingly focused on cyber risks as they relate to the integrity of financial statements too, so audit committee members have to be alert to today’s cyber threat environment.”

The survey found that executives are less likely than their teams to attend anti-bribery/anti-corruption (ABAC) training (38%) or participate in an ABAC risk assessment (30%). EY describes this as ‘alarming’, given that these executives are apparently exposed to circumstances which threaten their integrity on a regular basis. Twenty-one percent of CEOs said that they had been approached to pay a bribe in the past, compared with 10% of all C-suite interviewees.

You can access the entire report here.

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