The survey is based on 75 respondents representing organisations across financial, manufacturing, services, technology and trade sectors.
While there has been a rise in reported fraud worldwide, the unusual rise in reporting the number of incidence in India could be the result of several factors, including stringent legislations on fraud prevention and detection, which has resulted in organisations reporting more incidents of fraud to demonstrate transparency and better governance.
However, it is surprising to note that nearly one-third of the cases were detected by chance (internal/ external tip-off and accidents), which is a cause of concern, as the known crimes may only represent the "tip of the iceberg", with many other frauds remaining undetected.
Sumit Makhija, associate director, PwC said, "We have seen that frauds are happening in three main areas asset misappropriation by employees, financial mismanagement and corruption and bribery."
Despite the significant increase in the number of organisations reporting fraud as compared with last survey, only 18 per cent of the respondent organisations considered it likely that their organisation would be subject to economic crime over the next five years.
Nearly one-third of the frauds in the country was perpetrated by insiders, i.e. persons involved in the day-to-day management of the organisation, who had good knowledge of the systems of the organisation and its weaknesses.
