CGF ARTICLES, OPINIONS & EDITORIALS
WHISTLEBLOWERS: VICTIMS OR VILLAINS? (2015-07-27)
July 27,
2015 11820 11820 
Article by Terrance M. Booysen (CGF: Chief Executive Officer) and peer reviewed by Louis Strydom (Partner: PricewaterhouseCoopers)
For the past number of years South Africa has been placed in the spotlight when it comes to matters such as crime and corruption, and most of the surveys dealing with this scourge have a consistent message that this situation is not improving. Once again, the PricewaterhouseCoopers 2014 Global Economic Crime Survey validates this dire situation where 69% of South African respondents indicated that they had experienced economic crime of various proportions. Alarmingly, this figure of affected organisations had increased nine percentage points higher than in the previous survey results which were recorded in 2011. Whilst the PwC Economic Crime Survey also noted a shift in the typical perpetrator (now being found in the senior management structures), most concerning is the fact that these perpetrators are typically males with university degrees who are aged between 31 and 40 and who have been with the same employer for over ten years.
The fact that many South African organisations report significantly higher incidences of procurement fraud, human resources fraud, bribery and financial statement fraud -- as compared their global counterparts -- is of great concern and it begs the question as to how organisations must arrest this increasing trend? The statistics reported in PwC’s survey are consistent with the recently released ENSafrica 2015 Anti-bribery and Corruption Survey. This survey also found increases of bribery amongst their respondents, notwithstanding the fact that there was also a heightened awareness of anti-bribery compliance within many organisations.
Given South Africa’s highly visible corruption cases which continue to dominate the local and international headlines, unsurprisingly the ENSafrica 2015 Survey places South Africa amongst the top contenders for the continent’s “corruption hotspots”. Other African countries who share the same podium with South Africa’s levels of corruption include Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria and Uganda. Given this rather depressing situation, what is of greater concern is the fact that only 36% of the ENSafrica surveyed companies were confident that they had proportionate procedures in place to mitigate their risks of bribery. To this extent, the majority of the respondents did not believe they were well prepared to respond to the threat of an anti-bribery regulatory investigation. Whilst only 40% of the respondents had a dedicated anti-bribery training programme in place for their employees, an astonishingly low 15% of respondents actually provide anti-bribery training to their business partners.
With the ongoing high rates of economic crime being reported, how committed are the top leaders in organisations if their intentions are to arrest this scourge in Africa? Furthermore, if the top leadership is not actively playing its part and showing high-level commitment to support whistle-blowers -- who are largely responsible for detecting and reporting unethical behaviour -- then the economy is surely headed for certain disaster. South Africa continues to be plagued by many reports of poor governance practices, not least new scandalous cases being reported one after the next in both the private and public sectors. One only has to think of cases such as SAFA, Landbank, SABC, Watergate, Travelgate, Unilever, Eskom, Nkandla, PRASA and so many others to realise there is a massive problem which is spiralling out of control. In each of these cases where certain ‘under handedness’ has either been proved or alleged to have taken place, one wonders whether or not the whistle-blower is regarded as the victim or the villain, and whether they have been properly supported by their leadership to do the right thing?
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