Scams can Turn Governance into Malfeasance

In July 2003 the market carried the news that fraud and other kinds of economic crime have struck more than a third of US companies. At the origin of this information has been a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the CPA, and Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, a law firm. Of 91 companies whose executives completed the survey, some 35 percent responded that in the previous two years they had been victims of: asset misappropriation, usually theft or embezzlement, orother kinds of economic crime which inflict financial and industrial organizations. The way it is usually defined, economic crime encompasses a range of illegal activities, including cybercrimes. A good question is who pays for it. While three out of four of US respondents to the aforementioned survey had insurance coverage, less than half obtained from their insurers recoveries for the crimes to which they were subjected. Hence, in the last analysis, the shareholders paid the bill.