Procurement and payment processes

Most of the fraud and corruption detected at businesses occurs within the procurement process which starts from where a need for a service or product is identified till where payment has been made for the product or service. The ACFE’s Report of Nations has confirmed that most incidents of dishonesty are detected through tips and whistleblowing (48%) and the second one is internal audit (14%). The bigger the organisation the more difficult it becomes to identify irregularities due to a large amount of data and transactions.

It is therefore important to understand the schemes that are used to defraud businesses and create rules or red flags to identify some of these irregularities. Red Flags are not proof of all irregularities but serve as an indication of possible irregularities which warrant further inspection or investigation. During XTND’s investigation of fraud and corruption in the procurement environment, we have uncovered various schemes. Here are the most common schemes with some red flags to identify possible irregularities…