Nigeria and South Africa are the two African countries with the highest number of reported fraud cases.

This was disclosed by the inaugural Africa Fraud Barometer initiated by KPMG to measure fraud on the African continent and expose the risk of fraud for companies in their day-to-day operations.

The report, however, revealed that fewer cases of fraud were reported in the two countries in the second half of 2011, while Zimbabwe had the highest value of perpetrated frauds, amounting to over $1.2bn.

The report also found that cases of fraud in the continent increased from 355 in the first half of 2011 to 520 cases in the second half of the year. This represents an increase of 46.4 per cent.

However, the value of fraud decreased from $7.17bn to $3.702bn in the same period.

KPMG’s Global Leader for Forensics, who developed the barometer to form a bigger picture of fraud prevalence in Africa, Mr. Petrus Marais, said.

According to him, the barometer distinguishes between the number of reported fraud cases, type of perpetrators, victims, type of fraud, countries and targeted industries, with the data currently available capturing the entire 2011.

Accounting for 29 per cent of perpetrators, company employees committed the most fraud during the second half of 2011, the report revealed. This represents an increase of two per cent from the first six months of the year.[b][/b]