KUALA LUMPUR,MALAYSIA -- The police are finding it hard to fight fraud cases where criminals of criminal breach of trust (CBT), cheating and forgery have amassed a whopping RM784.9 million in 6,422 cases last year. Inspector General of Police Tan Sri Bakri Omar said the police were less successful in fighting fraud as compared to other crimes such as rape, murder and drug cases where the solving rate exceeded 40 per cent. "For fraud cases such as CBT, cheating and forgery cases, the solving rate is about 33 per cent or one third of the reported cases. But there are various reasons which contribute to this," he said in a keynote address at the official opening of the seminar on 'Insurance Fraud - Detection, Investigation and Prevention' here Wednesday. Bakri said eventhough the number of cases increased by leaps and bounds, the number of officers under the Commercial Crime Investigation Department (CCID) remained at 80 officers, which eventually led to a backlog of cases. "Due to this, since January this year, the CCID has quadrupled its size (320 officers) when compared it was a branch of the Criminal Investigation Department," he said. However, Bakri said there was a drop in fraud losses last year as against 2004 where fraudsters "got away" with RM813.7 million with a slightly-lesser 6,404 cases. Bakri said commercial crime cases now were very complex and diverse with fraudsters continuing to be inventive and getting more sophisticated by the day which required knowledgeable and experienced officers to handle the cases. "Experienced criminal investigation officers with qualifications of law, accounting, multimedia, forensic accounting, banking are being roped in to carry out the challenging task," he said. Bakri said the police had also set up its own forensic unit which had been very fruitful in solving many cases when assisting commercial crime investigations. He said periodic meetings between CCID officers with various bodies such as the Securities Commission, Bank Negara Malaysia and other professional bodies had benefitted the parties involved to curb the crime. "In these meetings, ideas and information are exchanged, minor problems are ironed out and red tapes are reduced. All these are aimed at providing a better service to the public," he said. On insurance fraud, Bakri proposed insurance fraud to be identified as a specific crime as to define what constituted the crime, along with the penalties that could be imposed. He said the move would be easier to prosecute cases since it was timely to formulate significant provisions in the Penal Code to address the serious problem of insurance fraud. He also said immunity statutes should also be considered to provide protection for good faith exchange of information between insurers or law enforcement officials or organisation and exempt them from lawsuits brought against them. Bakri said insurance fraud would push up the cost of operations of the industry and would in turn be passed to the general public which would end in paying higher premium. "So it is not a battle of the police alone, there must be sound cooperation and collaboration between the police, the insurance industry, adjusters and general public to thwart insurance fraud effectively," he said. The seminar is jointly organised by the Malaysian Insurance Institute, The National Claims Society, the Association of Malaysian Loss Adjusters, Bank Negara Malaysia and the Royal Malaysia Police. The seminar aims to expose local and international participants on the current regional fraud scenario, latest strategies and techniques in preventing and detecting fraud, insight of police investigations, forensic investigation and the art of collecting fraud evidence.
Thanks to: 15 March 2006, By BERNAMA
