Technology key to financial crime detection

Business Reporter -

MUSCAT, APRIL 25 -

Technology is the number one influencer in detecting financial crime promptly by using intelligence to identify unusual trends, according to 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 in a presentation at a workshop on Financial Crime Control-Challenges and Opportunities, hosted by The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, Oman Chapter at The College of Banking and Financial Studies, on Tuesday.

Tuesday’s event was held under the auspices of Nasser Abdullah al Riyami, Assistant Attorney General, and was attended by over 100 professionals from the ROP, State audit, CMA, financial institutions, banks and colleges. The Chief Public Prosecutor Nasser Khamis al Sawai was present as well.

“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.

In Oman, there has been a lot of good work around the AML Law, 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,” said Mahdi.

Earlier welcoming the participants at the conference, Davis Kallukaran, the President of the Oman Chapter of ACFE, said 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 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 GDP of $76.9 trillion the loss on account of Fraud to the world can be estimated at $4 trillion in a year.

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, CFEs are reducing business Fraud worldwide.