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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 3:33 am
Time: 3:33 am
Results for commercial crime
2 results foundAuthor: Deloitte MCS Limited Title: Northern Ireland Office - Evaluation of the Radiolink Scheme: Final Report Summary: The strategic aim of the Radiolink Scheme is to reduce the level of business and retail crime experienced by towns, in particular, shoplifting and to reduce the fear of crime. Radiolink also seeks to deter anti-social behaviour affecting town centres. This report examines the range of evidence available to indicate the impact of introducing Radiolink on the level of retail crime and anti-social behaviour. Evalaution activity contributing to this assessment included analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data. Details: Belfast: Deloitte MCS Limited, 2006. 98p. Source: Internet Resource Year: 2006 Country: United Kingdom URL: Shelf Number: 119474 Keywords: Antisocial BehaviorCommercial CrimeCrime PreventionCrimes Against BusinessesRetail CrimeShoplifting |
Author: United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime Title: Business, Corruption and Crime in Serbia: The impact of bribery and other crime on private enterprise Summary: This survey of businesses in Serbia reveals that corruption and other forms of crime are a great hindrance to private enterprise and have a negative effect on private investment. A significant percentage of businesses pay bribes to public officials repeatedly over the course of the year. Businesses in the Accommodation and Food service activities sector and the Transportation and Storage sectors combined are those most affected by bribery, followed by businesses in the Wholesale trade and Retail trade sector. The public officials with the highest risk of bribery in interactions with businesses are public utilities officers, police officers, municipal or provincial officers and customs officers. While indicators of corruption perceptions are undoubtedly useful for raising awareness, this survey measures the actual experience of corruption and crime through representative sample surveys of businesses in order to provide a more realistic, evidence-based assessment of corruption and crime affecting the business sector. In so doing it focuses on the extent and pattern of bribery by businesses from five different sectors (accounting for over 71.1 per cent of all businesses in Serbia) in their frequent interactions with the public administration. According to the survey, of all the businesses that had contact with a public official in the 12 months prior to the survey 17 per cent paid a bribe to a public official. The average prevalence of business bribery in Serbia is higher than the share of ordinary Serbian citizens (9.3 per cent) who experienced the same in UNODC's 2011 study on the general population. The examination of the experience of businesses that pay bribes to public officials underlines the fact that corruption plays a role in the daily business of many companies. Bribe-paying businesses pay an average of 7 bribes per year, or about one bribe every seven weeks. The prevalence of bribery is substantially higher among micro (up to 9 employees) businesses than among businesses of other sizes. A substantial share of all the bribes paid to public officials by businesses in Serbia are paid in cash (45.2 per cent), followed by the provision of food and drink in exchange for an illicit "favour" by the public official (25.5 per cent) and other goods (21.7 per cent). When bribes are paid in cash, the mean amount paid per bribe is 52,588 Dinar, or the equivalent of 935 EUR-PPP. As for which party actually broaches the subject of kickbacks, in 43.5 per cent of all bribery cases the payment of a bribe is offered by a representative of the business without a prior request being made, whereas in over half (56.1 per cent) of cases payment is either explicitly (16.2 per cent) or implicitly (22.4 per cent) requested by the public official or are paid after a third-party request (17.5 per cent). The most common purposes for paying bribes cited by businesses is to "speed up business-related procedures" (40.3 per cent of all bribes), "receiving better treatment" (19 per cent) and "making the finalization of a procedure possible" (11.3 per cent). At the same time, almost a quarter (23.4 per cent) of bribes paid serve for no specific immediate purpose for the businesses paying them, suggesting that these are "sweeteners" given to public officials to "groom" them for future interactions in the interest of the company. None of the businesses part of the survey had reported bribery incidents in the 12 months prior to the survey to official authorities in Serbia, which suggests that businesses often feel obliged to participate in bribery. This is also reflected in the main reasons cited for not reporting bribery: "it is common practice to pay or give gifts to public officials" (34.2 per cent), "it is pointless to report it as nobody would care " (30.8 per cent) and "the payment or gift was given as a sign of gratitude to the public servant for delivering the service requested " (21.6 per cent). Bribery in the private sector not only comprises bribes paid by businesses to public officials, it also takes place between businesses themselves in order to secure business transactions. Though lower than the prevalence of bribery between the private and public sector, at 6.6 per cent the prevalence of business-to-business bribery indicates that the practice does exist in Serbia. None of the businesses in the survey reported such business to business bribery incidents to relevant authorities. Some 9.2 per cent of business representatives decided not to make a major investment in the 12 months prior to the survey due to the fear of having to pay bribes to obtain requisite services or permits, thus the impact of bribery on business activity can be substantial. The consequences of other more conventional crimes on a business's property and economic activities can also be considerable, both in terms of direct costs stemming from physical damage and indirect costs in the form of insurance premiums, security expenditure and lost investment opportunities. For instance, more than one third of businesses (35.5 per cent) in Serbia fall victim to fraud by outsiders in various different guises in a year and such businesses are victimized an average of 10.1 times in that time period. Annual prevalence rates for burglary (10.2 per cent) and vandalism (9.5 per cent) in the private sector are also significant, as are the average number of times businesses affected fall victim to those crimes (4.4 and 2.8 respectively). The prevalence rate of motor vehicle theft (MVT) is 1.7 per cent of all car owning businesses, with victims suffering an average of 1.4 incidents. Moreover, over the past 12 months 1 per cent of all businesses in Serbia fell victim to extortion, a crime that can be linked to organized criminal groups. In marked contrast to corruption, a larger share of conventional crimes (on average, 41.8 per cent for five crime types) is reported to the police by businesses in Serbia. While the majority of business representatives (76.2 per cent) consider that the crime risk for their company has remained stable in comparison to the previous 12 months, around one in six (17.1 per cent) think it is on the increase and 2.8 per cent on the decrease. The fear of crime plays a very important role in the decision-making process of business leaders when it comes to making major investments. Although there are some differences by economic sector, on average one out of ten (10.6 per cent) entrepreneurs in Serbia state that they did not make a major investment in the previous 12 months due to the fear of crime. Yet while about 93.2 per cent of businesses in Serbia use at least one protective security system against crime, only 44.8 per cent have any kind of insurance against the economic cost of crime. Together corruption and other forms of crime place a considerable burden on economic development in Serbia. Putting in place more and better targeted measures for protecting businesses against crimes, as well as for preventing corruption (such as effective internal compliance measures and other policies concerning corruption) could make that burden considerably lighter. Details: Vienna: UNODC, 2013. 76p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 27, 2014 at: http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/statistics/corruption/Serbia_Business_corruption_report_ENG.pdf Year: 2013 Country: Serbia and Montenegro URL: http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/statistics/corruption/Serbia_Business_corruption_report_ENG.pdf Shelf Number: 131809 Keywords: BriberyBusiness CrimeCommercial CrimeCrime Against BusinessesCrime StatisticsPolitical Corruption |