Middle East and North Africa

The 2018 Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse issued by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) includes 101 cases from the Middle East and North Africa that were investigated in 2016-2017. This chapter presents three exhibits. The first exhibit shows that 49% of the cases analyzed involved some form of corruption, which is more than twice as frequent as any other type of fraud scheme. The second exhibit argues that fraud schemes in the Middle East and North Africa are almost twice as likely to be detected by a tip as by any other means. The third exhibit shows that external audits of the financial statements are the most commonly implemented anti-fraud control among victim organizations in the Middle East and North Africa. The chapter provides questionnaires of jurisdiction-specific information pertaining to the legal, investigatory, and general anti-fraud environment for several countries in the Middle East and North Africa.