Deloitte Conference ref. International Fraud Awareness Week

Today marks the end of the International Fraud Awareness Week, which was celebrated worldwide this year from 15 to 20 November. On that occasion, in our coutry, several events were organized, at which the prevention and consequences of financial crime, fraud and bribery were discussed, as well as the ways to fight against these negative social phenomena. The first conference on fraud and bribery was held on Tuesday, 17 November, organized by Deloitte d.o.o. Belgrade. Due to the epidemiological situation, similar to numerous other events, it was held online. The Institute for Standardization of Serbia ISS was a part of this conference, which was attended by the representatives of government institutions, non-governmental organizations, as well as the experts from Serbia and the region.

Financial fraud and bribery are global problems. According to the research, they are not declining globally, despite an increasing number of mechanisms for their recognition and prevention. Large companies, especially those from EU, apply anti-bribery measures in their business. However, SMEs do not have sufficient human and financial resources to deal with this topic in everyday business.

The first day of the conference was dedicated to education on financial crime, where the representatives of the organizers, as well as the guests from the Ministry of Finance of Slovenia, the European Investment Bank and the US Ministry of Justice, addressed the participants. The importance of International standards in the field of quality management and ant-bribery management systems was especially emphasized during the conference. Tatjana Bojanić, ISS Director and Violeta Nešković-Popović, Assistant Director, talked about the implementation and application of SRPS ISO 37001 as the possible solution for recognizing and preventing bribery, as well as its relation to the rest of management system standards.

In addition to ISS, the partners of the organizers were the Association of Certified Fraud Investigators of Serbia, Serbian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Anti-Corruption Agency, non-governmental organization Transparency Serbia and Faculty of Economics of the University of Belgrade, where the educational panel on the career in forensics is organized today.