Qualification: PSP40416 – Certificate IV in Government Investigations
Financial crime is an ongoing risk to any department or agency that receives government funding. It is important to not only have a fraud control program but also vital to monitor the fraud risks within the program. Designated regulatory compliance investigators can investigate fraud, but fraud prevention is a better form of risk management than fraud investigation. That is why Fraud Control Awareness is vital to government.
In order to conclude whether management has established and implemented an effective antifraud program, an organisation must determine what potential vulnerabilities exist with regard to fraud perpetrated within the organisation and against the organisation. The organisation should consider potential fraud schemes and scenarios that could be perpetrated against an organisation. Management should pay special attention to the risk of management override of controls that could result in fraudulent activity.
Internal Audit management developed the initial population of potential fraud schemes/scenarios using a number of documents and tools to assist in this process. Those tools included:
• Prior internal audit process-level risk assessments
• Fraud training materials obtained through various seminars and outside vendors
• External literature on the topic of fraud
In addition to these tools, significant knowledge of the organisation’s operations coupled with the experience and expertise of the Internal Audit Team in auditing each department is key to developing a comprehensive population of potential fraud schemes/scenarios.
Management should formally define and outline each fraud scenario that is relevant to the organisation to ensure a common understanding of each risk by all relevant personnel. The potential fraud schemes and scenarios should be considered across the entire organisation and are broken down into functional areas of the business.
Identification of fraud risks may come from:
• Analysis of trends in data
- Analysis of information coming from inside or outside the agency
- Internal whistleblowing
- Information from the public (dob ins)
- Behaviours consistent with fraud risk
- Unexplained income or budget deviations
- Missing assets
- Falsified records
- Unidentified vulnerabilities
- Identification of failures in monitoring
- Accidental discovery
See some examples of Fraud against Government on our Youtube channel, there is a whole playlist for you! Enjoy.