The 2012-2013 fiscal year in Canada can be characterized by a high number of important financial events and scandals in the area of funding and financing, including fraud crimes which were effectively resolved with the focus on the activities of the Canadian investigation centers and police. In 2013, the public’s attention was engrossed with such two financial scandals as the Settlement and Integration Services Organization (SISO) bankruptcy and the fraud scandal associated with the City Hall employees. [1] In order to understand the influential tendencies in the financial sphere in Canada during the 2012-2013 fiscal year, it is important to focus on the detailed discussion of the SISO and City Hall financial cases.
SISO’s bankruptcy declared in 2011 attracted the attention of the community’s public. However, the leaders of the Hamilton Police Service and members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) also demonstrated their interest in the controversial case. Settlement and Integration Services Organization was known as the agency working in order to support immigrants and address the needs of refugees migrating to Canada. Several offices of the organization were opened in Hamilton, Ontario. [1]
Thus, the non-profit organization worked to support, promote, and implement programs which were developed to meet the needs and interests of the government-assisted refugees in the region. [1] Thousands of immigrants and refugees in Hamilton were annually supported and accommodated with the focus on the proposed effective programs, strategies, and initiatives. From this perspective, the overall SISO’s funding was reported as more than $10 million in 2010. [1] These numbers were large, and the declared bankruptcy in 2011 attracted the police’s attention because the organization was mostly funded by the Citizenship and Immigration Federal Department in Canada.
The prolonged investigation of the financial crime allowed the police investigators and officers to speak about usual cases of falsifying payroll and employee information and regular cases of using the organization’s credit and debit cards by the employees in order to cover their personal needs. The group of the organization leaders’ was accused of embezzling the significant amount of money in 2012. Thus, it was stated in the reports that between 2008 and 2010, former SISO executive director Morteza Jafarpour, Ahmed (Robert) Salama working as the financial controller in the organization, and Nese Burgaz working as a SISO administrator, used more than $ 4 million for their personal needs. [1]
Those criminal activities led to the organization’s bankruptcy in 2011. In spite of the police’s focus on the continuous forensic investigation related to the case, all details of the case became known only in 2012 year. [1] The accusation of the SISO executive director, financial controller, and administrator became the significant financial event in the 2012-2013 fiscal year because of the role of Settlement and Integration Services Organization for the support of the Canadian financial policies related to the issue of immigration in the country.
The fact that the members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police charged the leaders of SISO after many months of the forensic investigation supports the idea that financial crimes remain to be one of the priorities for investigating in Canada. Much attention is paid to such strategies as the regular audit of the government’s financial resources with the focus on the activities of non-profit organizations. The activities of the SISO leaders made the public discuss the financial issues of the case because such frauds are typical in the sphere of non-profit organizations, and the government’s task is to propose effective strategies in order to resolve a number of cases associated with embezzling organization’s resources.
One more financial scandal in Canada is associated with the activities of the employees in Toronto City Hall. During the year of 2013, the employees of City Hall caused the bankruptcy of the important financial structures of City Hall and demonstrated the active use of a ‘bust-out’ financial fraud scheme. [1] Thus, one of the city finance employees was accused of using more than $1 million of the government’s financial resources for his personal needs and cash payments. [1]
This case can be discussed as the most significant financial fraud in the history of the City Hall’s activities. It is stated in the reports that the fraud was a result of the effectively planned and realized practices associated with utilizing cash. The forensic investigation illustrated the volumes of the fraud with the focus on the inability of the City Hall’s system to prevent the financial crime of such a size.
While referring to the details of the scandal, it is important to note that the accused employee focused on manipulating incoming payments, and he also used resources provided by more than 50 clients in order to cover significant personal costs. The investigators concluded that much attention should be paid to regular auditing and reviewing business transactions in order to prevent similar frauds in the future. [1]
It was also stated in the report that the fraud was revealed because of the organization’s focus on unusual accounting transactions. [1] However, the focus on the payment policies, on the review of transactions, and on the auditing procedures did not result in improving the financial security in City Hall because the problem was discovered again in relation to the ‘bust-out’ fraud operations realized by the employees.
It was found that the group of employees continued illegal financial activities, and the focus was on the fraud scheme that allowed acquiring significant amounts of credit. In order to increase credit limits, the accused persons used the information related to their employment in City Hall, and they also utilized the public financial resources in order to pay the amounts required according to the credit statement. [1] The employees focused not only on using the organization’s resources but also on exhausting the available credit without providing the necessary payments.
The provided examples of the financial scandals observed in the 2012-2013 fiscal year serve to support the idea that the sphere of financial frauds changes each year, and the authorities should pay more attention to developing effective strategies for preventing this type of crimes. The financial sphere of Canada develops according to certain laws and regulations, and the current state of the system allows criminal to realize their frauds with the focus on the weaknesses in bank systems and in the regulation of non-profit organizations. From this point, weaknesses in the administration of financial institutions and organizations can lead to increasing the rate of financial frauds in these spheres. As a result, the discussed financial events and scandals are effective examples of the recent tendencies in the behaviors of criminals who prefer to operate in the financial sphere.
Reference
Royal Canadian Mounted Police. 2014. Web.