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Partners:

Whistle-blowing, Anti-fraud, Risk management and workplace ethics

ARUA SFS Safeguarding training seminar for researchers: 21 May 2021

What is fraud?

Various legal definitions, with these types of elements:• Intention• Untruth or deception• To obtain an unfair or unlawful or undeserved gain or

advantage• And/or deprive a victim of a right

Fraud and contributing factors

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The balancing of the good and right for self against the goodand right for others.

A set of positive values applied in organisations in its decisionmaking and in its relationships with its stakeholders and thebroader society.

Source: King IV Report on Corporate Governance 2016, Institute of Directors

Good people sometimes do bad things when circumstances lend to such misconduct.

Business Ethics 6th edition by Roussouw and Van Vuuren

Ethics in the workplace

Fraud model

https://chapters.theiia.org/long-island/ChapterDocuments/2018%20May%20Newsletter.pdf

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• Corporate culture of non-compliance to legislation, policiesand good codes of conduct

• Poor discipline and lack of consequences for those who commitirregularities

• Low employee morale and unfair labour practices• Inadequate internal control systems and processes• Lack of monitoring and enforcement of university rules by

management• Inadequate segregation of duties and ineffective internal audit

Circumstances conducive to fraud

• Academic dishonesty, including plagiarism and research datafalsification

• Misappropriation of university’s intellectual property• Research collaborations with discredited partners and lack of

due diligence checks• Acceptance of research funding from funders with unethical

reputation• Contraventions of university’s regulations• Irregularities in admission of students• Teaching, assessment, supervision and examination

irregularities• Exceeding of academic authority

Risk areas in the academic environment

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Risk areas in the financial environment

• Financial losses and wasteful expenditure• Unauthorised use of donor/contract funding and contract non-

compliance• Irregular procurement and failure to comply with procurement

policy• Unauthorised opening of bank accounts in the university’s name

and/or diverting of such income to private use• Approval of payments without supporting documentation and/or

for services not rendered/goods not delivered• Self-approval• Irregular or fictitious claims for re-imbursement

What can go wrong? (cont.)

HR-related examples:

• Non-compliance with Code of Conduct and HR policies• Non-compliance with Labour legislation• Conflict of interest Unauthorised outside work • Various types of misconduct• Failure of line management to exercise managerial duties

(performance, discipline and compliance)

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Criminal examples:

• Theft and Fraud• Forgery and misrepresentation• Harassment and assault• Tax evasion • Possession of illegal substances• Cybersecurity and confidential / personal info breaches (focus

area)

What can go wrong? (cont.)

Depending on the national legislative requirements and university policies:

What can go wrong:

• Providing academic progress info to anyone other than the studentthemselves, without written consent of the student e.g. to parent, employer,sponsor etc.

• UP staff with valid PSoft access, using it to access student info for personalreasons (a parent in Faculty A looking up info on a student in Faculty B

• Displaying of class marks info (with student number showing) for aparticular module – even if surname and name of students not showing.

• Looking up info on students in other faculties and providing it to the legalrepresentatives of a suspended staff member

Protection of private/personal information of students

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Focus area: Legal risks/IP

Contravening of IP and contractual limitations:

• Buying research data from an external company for further usecontrary to the stipulated limitation clause which prohibits anyfurther republication thereof.

• Appropriating another’s IP and passing off as own authorship

• Assuming that research IP belongs to the individual staffmember unless there is a formal contract between theuniversity and the staff member.

• A student applies to University for admission into the post-graduate programme.

• As part of the minimum admissions requirements, as publishedin the University’s regulations, the applicants need to have 300credits from the listed undergraduate programmes.

• The student does not comply with these requirements. Thestudent administrator handling his application calls him toinform him and offers to “make a plan” for him, in return for asum of money.

• The student gets the banking details on Whatsapp messageand deposits the stipulated amount in the private bankaccount of the administrator. Due to the staff shortages, there isno one to check the admissions, once they are processed onthe system by the administrator.

Integrated case study: Irregularities, non-compliance and corruption

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• The administrator processes the application and the studentstarts his studies.

• A while later, he struggles in his examinations and do not reachthe sub-minimum semester mark in order to sit for theexamination. He approaches his lecturer and make multipleemotional pleas to be permitted to sit for the examination.

• Although this is expressly prohibited in the examination policy,the lecturer takes pity on the crying student and permits him towrite the examination. The student fails the examination and isnot entitled to write a supplementary examination.

• This time, he threatens the lecturer in her office on campus. Thelecturer does not permit it and reports his conduct to theStudent Discipline Department.

Case study (cont.)

• The student fabricates false accusations of discriminationagainst the lecturer and reports her to the University’s HRDepartment.

• In the meantime, the corrupt student administrator offers tochange the ‘fail’ mark to a pass mark on the University’s ITsystem, in return for additional money.

• The above corruption is discovered when the internal auditdepartment analyses the data audit trails on all mark changesprocessed after the end of the examination period. Theadministrator is suspended, a disciplinary hearing is held andthe chairperson finds the employee guilty.

• In addition, the irregular admission of this student and anumber of other students is discovered before the graduation,based on an additional central verification process which nowincludes a verification of admission.

Case study: (cont.)

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What can you do?

Step 1: Be aware that non-compliance and fraud is real and can takeplace anytime and by anyone.

Step 2: Familiarise yourself with your University’s policies applicable toyour position = prevent becoming involved in non-compliance andirregularities.

Step 3: Seek guidance from line management and policy owners.

Step 4: Ensure adequate record-keeping.

Step 5: “See something – say something”.

Whistle-blowing

A complainant who exposes information or activity within a private, public, orgovernment organization that is deemed illegal, abusive, harmful or unethical.

Whistle-blowing may be protected by national legislation and as well ascovered by university’s own policies.

Examples include:

• South Africa: Protected Disclosures Act, Prevention and Combatting ofCorrupt Activities Act

• Kenya: Bribery Act, Access to Information Act, 2016, Witness Protection Act,Constitution of Kenya, Anti-Corruption & Economic Crimes Act (ACECA)

• Ghana: Whistleblower Act

• International: United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) 2003and International Labour Organization (ILO).

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Risk management in universities

Risk management is the process of identifying, assessing andreducing the impact of negative factors (internal and external)on the organisation.

For example:

• financial instability

• natural disasters and health pandemics

• other more specific threats to achievement of theorganisation’s strategic goals

Questions and comments

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THANK YOU

arua-sfs@up.ac.za

ARUA_SFS