Procurement Fraud and Corruption: How to identify and mitigate procurement fraud and corruption risk

Recognising the significant number of procurement fraud and corruption risks that can impact an organisation - including roles and people who have the potential to influence or manipulate projects and the procurement life cycle that might include a lack of trained personnel, procurement and financial controls, and compliance measures in place - can undermine the design and implementation of an anti-corruption and counter procurement fraud approach. Since procurement fraud and corruption continue to develop in scope, scale and creativity, the risks, typologies and routes to mitigation should be regarded as part of a constantly assessed and updated approach.

Creating an anti-corruption and counter procurement fraud approach should provide an awareness of the criminal risks within an organisation's procurement and associated processes and reinforce the importance and vital role of leadership, ethics professionals, staff and other stakeholders in building an anti-corruption culture to protect organisational revenues and reputation.

The 4-pillar framework approach to counter procurement fraud contains 16 steps to identify and prevent corruption and procurement fraud risk. It examines how a risk mitigation framework created with a foundation of education, data collection, risk assessment and a coordinated response and change management process can help identify and mitigate risk. Planning and following this approach one step at a time, collecting all available data, will assist in assessing the challenges and performance measurement in each area and help create a strategic response to identified risk.