Tax fraud crisis: Innovators needed

Organized crime is assaulting national treasuries around the globe. CFEs could advocate for new laws that would make excise and value-added tax fraud harder to commit and easier to detect and prosecute. Learn how groups of tax cheats are stealing billions and how researchers and fraud fighters are finding new ways to beat them.

A “giant sucking sound,” warned U.S. presidential candidate Ross Perot in 1992, would accompany the flight of American jobs to Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Though that never quite happened, today that fearsome metaphor heralds the massive theft of excise and value-added tax (VAT) revenues, mostly by organized crime groups. Their frauds make it even harder for the still-struggling American and European economies to fully recover from the global financial crisis. For CFEs, this crisis is a summons to speak out as thought leaders.