The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners estimates that 5% of the annual revenues of a typical organisation is lost to deliberate deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain. That is, fraud.  In other words, a staggering €3.5 trillion are lost to fraud each year across the world.  And some of the typical symptoms may sound quite familiar: cost overruns, project delays, inferior product quality and overstatement of bills.   

The EU is on a big drive to clamp down on fraud in EU-funded projects.  The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) requires the EU and the Member States to counter fraud and any illegal activities affecting the financial interests of the Union.  The Common Provisions Regulation for the 2014-20 Programming Period follows suit, requiring Member States to put in place effective and proportionate anti-fraud measures.  Anti-fraud controls are associated with reduced fraud losses and shorter fraud duration. Fraud schemes that occur at victim organizations with anti-fraud controls are significantly less costly and detected much more quickly than fraud at organizations without such controls.   

This course discusses the prevention, detection and reporting of fraud.  We cover anti-fraud strategies, self-assessment tools, integrity pacts and first and second level controls through a large selection of case studies and workshops of particular relevance to the European Structural and Investment Funds.  And this is done with a holistic approach, taking in account other important matters of the 2014-20 multiannual framework - performance and simplification.