Managing Fraud Risk: A Practical Guide for Directors and Managers

The Hairs on the Back of My Neck

It is May 2000 and I am sitting in a conference room in the London head office of one of the largest companies in the UK. It has been a difficult meeting, one of those high pressure situations that come with the job from time to time. Sitting alongside me is the company's Director of Human Resources. Opposite us on the other side of the table is one of the company's area managers – or to be more precise, one of the company's ex-area managers, as the Director of Human Resources has just fired him. Before he did so I spent 30 minutes going through the results of my investigation into the ex-manager's activities following an anonymous tip-off: complaints of sexual harassment and inappropriate workplace behaviour; submitting inflated expense claims; the use of company property for private purposes; and alcohol misuse. Working with the company's internal auditors, I found evidence to substantiate most of these allegations – not all of them, but sufficient for these purposes. The man is no longer with the company.

I am confident that my approach and technique has been pure text book throughout. I have simply presented each piece of evidence that we found to the ex-manager during the course of the meeting, going through each component part in a calm, methodical, non-judgemental manner. After some initial objections, he has listened to what I have had to say and remained silent, by and large. At the end of my review, the Director of Human Resources has ...