Insider Tips for Creating Memorable Ethics and Compliance Training

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Insider Tips for Creating Memorable Ethics and Compliance Training

In a recent virtual session at the ACFE Fraud Conference Asia-Pacific, Rupert Evill sought to dispel the stigma and disdain surrounding ethics and compliance departments by teasing out the reasons for this stigma and providing attendees with insider tips to make compliance and ethics trainings memorable and effective. As the founder of EthicsInsight, Evill described his work by saying, “EthicsInsight is trying to simplify the way risk is assessed and benchmarked from a controls perspective so then you can really focus on managing the cultural change aspect.”

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Treat the Illness, Not the Symptom: Fixing Fraud at the Root With an Ethical Corporate Culture

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Treat the Illness, Not the Symptom: Fixing Fraud at the Root With an Ethical Corporate Culture

Examples of organizations employing fraudulent practices due to ethical lapses are in the media almost every week. Sometimes they let the bottom line become more important than adhering to their stated ethical values. Other times, they never cared about having an ethical framework in the first place. Regardless of why ethics were ignored, the outcome is almost always the same: fraud.

“I see fraud as a symptom of an unethical culture,” said Dr. Attracta Lagan, co-principal of Managing Values, in her keynote session at the virtual 2020 ACFE Global Fraud Conference Asia-Pacific. Dr. Lagan stressed to attendees how important it is for anti-fraud professionals to look at behavioral science when it comes to instilling and maintaining an ethical culture in their organization.

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What We Can Learn From Nonverbal Communication in Interviews

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What We Can Learn From Nonverbal Communication in Interviews

During her keynote session at this year’s virtual ACFE Fraud Conference Asia-Pacific, forensics and nonverbal communication expert Kiki Wong explained how we can deepen our understanding of body language and use that knowledge to conduct more thorough and effective investigations and interviews. As head of forensics at The Forensics Company and director at The Silent Company, Wong has spent years researching micro facial expressions, handwriting analysis and lie detection. Her presentation focused on various in-depth examinations of both nonverbal and verbal deceptive measures to be attuned to when investigating fraud.

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Famed Short-Seller Carson Block Warns That Emerging Market-Based Issuers Are “Rife With Fraud”

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Famed Short-Seller Carson Block Warns That Emerging Market-Based Issuers Are “Rife With Fraud”

Carson Block, the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Muddy Waters Capital LLC, made headlines at the beginning of 2020 when he posted a report to Twitter accusing Chinese coffee company Luckin Coffee Inc. of fraudulently inflating sales. In April, the company admitted that more than $300 million of its sales from 2019 were fabricated. Block told the ACFE that when he’s looking at companies to short, he starts with the basics. “It usually starts with companies or stories that seem ‘too good to be true,’” he said. “Then we read transcripts of senior managers speaking to see how promotional the management seems to be.”

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Identifying Conflicts of Interest From the Outside-In

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Identifying Conflicts of Interest From the Outside-In

Imagine that a large multinational company in China is suspected of engaging in collusive activity between salespeople and distributors, and the allegations involve potentially thousands of entities and millions of transactions. The company needs a way to rapidly identify potential trouble spots where they can launch a detailed investigation.

According to Allanna Rigby, director of Control Risks Group, conflicts of interest, like the case described above, are quite hard to detect. At the 2019 ACFE Fraud Conference Asia-Pacific, she told attendees that cultural nuances make conflict-of-interest investigations even more difficult.

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Navigating Stormy Seas: How Can You Anticipate the Unexpected in Investigations?

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Navigating Stormy Seas: How Can You Anticipate the Unexpected in Investigations?

Investigations are pivotal to fraud examination. Though fraud examiners prepare as much as they can before launching an investigation, CFEs understand that things are unlikely to go exactly as planned — new evidence arises and interviews yield surprising discoveries. CFEs also often must navigate difficult personalities, change their expectations for the scope of work, deal with organization restructuring and more that they cannot readily anticipate.

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"Billion-Dollar Whale" Author Recounts the Collapse of 1MDB

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"Billion-Dollar Whale" Author Recounts the Collapse of 1MDB

Best-selling author Tom Wright’s address at the 2019 ACFE Fraud Conference Asia-Pacific began and ended with one central figure in the 1MDB corruption scandal: Paris Hilton. I kid. But, Hilton’s name did come up several times while Wright recounted the events that led to the ousting of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and the exposure of a billion-dollar corruption scheme known as 1MDB.

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