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Insider threat - Managing people security

Published on 22 January 2020

What is financial crime?

Financial crimes are crimes of an acquisitive nature, from which the perpetrator makes some form of gain while the victim loses out. We mean crimes like: fraud; bribery; theft; embezzlement and money laundering to name a few (See Glossary of terms for key definitions).

21.2% of UK fraud is against the public sector with experts estimating that between 3% - 8% of healthcare budgets are lost to fraud each year (Button, 2015). In NHS Scotland terms, insufficient data is available to verify this figure. However, even if the loss was conservatively estimated to be 1% of budget, this amounts to more than £130 million per year (as at 2019). This is clearly a problem that needs addressed.