Misappropriation of assets, cybercrime and money laundering are the financial crimes faced more often by companies in Cyprus, as highlighted in the Survey of PwC on Economic Crime, the local results of which were presented here today.
According to a press release, the PwC survey concluded that companies in Cyprus more often fall victim to misappropriation of assets, with 58% of them saying they were victims of this kind of crime in the past two years.
Cyber-crime is the second economic crime in frequency, affecting 25% of companies in Cyprus. However, as shown by the survey, companies do not take the necessary security measures to prevent it, as only 32% have plans for dealing with such incidents.
Money laundering ranks third in frequency, with 25% of Cypriot companies saying they have been victimized in the past two years, as opposed to 11% of all participating companies in Western Europe.
Other economic crimes involving Cypriot companies are accounting and tax fraud (21% and 13% respectively), fraud relating to mortgages (13%), bribery and corruption (13%), the infringement of competition law (8%), the infringement of the legislation on intellectual property (4%), the insider trading (4%) and fraud concerning public contracts (4%).
According to the PwC survey, 33% of Cypriot companies which faced a financial crime incident, suffered a financial impact of more than $ 50,000, with an 8% reporting impact of more than $ 1 million.
In this year`s global survey, 6337 participants covered a wide range of business sectors in 115 countries, while the corresponding research in Cyprus was held with the participation of 90 companies and organizations from the fields of financial and professional services, technology, transport and communications.
