News

Dr Russell G Smith is retiring as a Principal Criminologist at the Australian Institute of Criminology in November 2020. Throughout his career, he has been a strong supporter of the counter fraud community. We were lucky enough to ask him some questions about his career and plans for the future.

Between November 2019 and March 2020, the Centre conducted the Fraud Capability Baseline Assessment Project to capture statistics on counter fraud capability across 19 Commonwealth programs and functions. The assessments also helped participants to understand more about their fraud risks and opportunities for capability building.

Find out what the Centre has been working on in this last quarter and what new tools are now available to support your counter fraud activities. This quarter the Centre began to return to business as usual after being part of the COVID-19 Taskforce.

Explore the latest quarterly newsletter from the Commonwealth Fraud Prevention Centre.

Grants are widely used to deliver valuable services and support to many Australians. They are also subject to significant integrity risks. Have you got some insights into fraud risks in grants administration? We want to hear from you.

While redeploying our resources and efforts to the joint Commonwealth COVID-19 Counter Fraud Taskforce in March, the Centre was still able to further some of our existing 2020 priorities. These achievements have been outlined in this article.

After quickly recognising the need for a swift and coordinated response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Commonwealth Fraud Prevention Centre and the Australian Federal Police’s Operation Ashiba combined forces between March and June to establish the Commonwealth COVID-19 Counter Fraud Taskforce (the Taskforce).

During the COVID-19 pandemic the Australian Federal Police (AFP) have been working tirelessly with its partners to protect Australia’s community. The AFP have two main Commonwealth fraud-related operations: Operation Ashiba and Operation Iris.

The Australian Government acts fast to support Australians. It established the National Bushfire Recovery Agency to support bushfire victims and introduced many measures to support Australians during the COVID-19 pandemic. However opportunistic fraudsters are taking advantage of this quick action. In response the Centre has developed some key guiding principles to help reduce fraud during a rapid response.

The Commonwealth Fraud Prevention Centre and the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) are working together to improve the evidence base on fraud against the Australian Government. The AIC has recently released a statistical reports which present the findings of the most recent annual census of fraud against Commonwealth entities.