Finance- Sophie Wilson

There has been various fraud scandals in multiple companies over the years but how does it happen? And why do people do it? I think it takes a certain type of person to engage in fraud, someone with a specific type of ethical/moral compass and, I would expect, that not a lot of us would ever get ourselves in such a position. Having said this, I have never worked in a large corporate business and probably haven’t ever being in a situation where myself or anyone around me would engage in fraud. So if I was in a certain situation and under pressure or being offered certain bribes would I think differently? Would we all? One example of why people may choose to commit fraud is incentives and pressures from above. Incentives of financial enticements can put a lot of pressure on employees within a company and can act as temptation to commit unethical or fraudulent behaviour. Individuals may feel that they need to cheat to get ahead in order to meet targets for financial gain; as well as...

I am still in shock form watching Channel 4’s How to lose 7 Billion Pounds; an insight into the years of problems that had been going on in Carillion leading up to their liquidation. I don’t understand how it had been possible for so much to be going for so long, and for no one to be doing anything about it. Even for the government to carry on awarding the company huge contracts, while there were so many warning signs of the business going downhill. In the case of Carillion, it is not a question of legality but a question of ethics. The things that were going on in the business were not necessarily illegal but when looked at in terms of ethical conduct, I think were questionable. For me, one of the worst aspects of the Carillion scandal was the shortfall in pension schemes. The company put 27,000 Carillion employees’ pension schemes at risk, there was a huge shortfall in the pension funds of hundreds of millions of pounds. Quite rightly the company’s pensions manager had tr...