Doha, Qatar - October 27, 2015

PwC hosted its latest Fraud Forum this week giving Qatari business leaders a valuable opportunity to meet with local and regional experts on the subject of managing conflicts of interest.

PwC's own Global Economic Crime Survey identified that, of all organisations surveyed in the Middle East, 35% had suffered from an incident of bribery or corruption and 33% had suffered from fraud in their procurement processes.

Whilst it is notoriously difficult to draw a clear link between conflicts of interest and these frauds, the experts and attendees acknowledged the real risk of loss due to unmanaged or undisclosed conflicts of interest between their own staff and other parties, such as suppliers.

Attendees heard about the latest trends in conflict detection and management and discussed issues such as how to build effective systems of internal control and disclosure. In addition attendees heard from PwC experts on the variety of sophisticated tools available to them to identify potential conflicts.

James Tebbs, Leader of PwC Qatar's Forensic Services Team said: "The existence of a conflict of interest is not necessarily a problem - it does not automatically equate to 'fraud'. What matters is being able to identify and manage the potential conflict so that the individual's interests are not put above those of the organisation."

Courtenay Smith, PwC ME Corporate Intelligence Leader added: "Conflicts of interest can be a difficult threat to identify. Taking a layered, proactive, approach is the best means of mitigating and managing the risks associated with conflicts. It is essential to instil a strong cultural awareness through training, policies and procedures; and to couple this with specialised tools designed to monitor for potential conflicts. With these in place, organisations are well positioned to determine what action may need to be taken to prevent fraud from occurring."

The PwC Fraud Forum is a platform through which attendees can share knowledge and participate in research to help prevent, detect and investigate fraud and economic crime in all its forms. Participants receive technical updates on fraud prevention and detection issues as well as having the opportunity to meet periodically with other PwC Fraud Forum members to exchange knowledge, ideas and experiences.

Attendees at the event included C-suite executives, compliance professionals, key individuals from Qatar's leading organisations and further specialists from PwC's Financial Crime practice. 

The next PwC Fraud Forum will be held in January 2016.

-Ends-

About PwC
At PwC, our purpose is to build trust in society and solve important problems. We're a network of firms in 157 countries with more than 208,000 people who are committed to delivering quality in assurance, advisory and tax services. Find out more and tell us what matters to you by visiting us at www.pwc.com.

Established in the Middle East for 40 years, PwC has firms in Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, the Palestinian territories, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with around 4,000 people. (www.pwc.com/me).

PwC refers to the PwC network and/or one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details.

©2015 PwC. All rights reserved

© Press Release 2015