Scottish Croquet Association

Introduction

The SCA requires all officers, committee members and volunteers to act honestly, with integrity and to safeguard the SCA’s resources for which they are responsible. Fraud is an ever-present threat to these resources and hence must be a concern to everyone. The SCA views fraud as an extremely serious matter and is committed to the promotion of an anti-fraud culture throughout the organisation.

The SCA will not accept any level of fraud or corruption; consequently, any case will be thoroughly investigated and dealt with appropriately. The Executive Committee is committed to ensuring that opportunities for fraud and corruption are reduced to the lowest possible level of risk.

This section explains the responsibilities of the SCA’s officers, committee members and volunteers in relation to both prevention and detection of fraud.

Suspected Fraud by Members

The SCA requires all its members to be open and transparent in the way they operate. In cases where fraudulent behaviour is suspected then this must be reported to the Chairman of the SCA.  If the Chairman is suspected of fraud then the case should be reported to the Secretary or to another Officer who is not suspected.   The Officer to whom the case has been reported will then bring the matter before the other Officers, except those suspected of fraud.   They will consider if there is sufficient evidence to report this matter to the appropriate agency and will support any investigation should this be found necessary.

Definitions - What is Fraud?

No precise legal definition of fraud exists; many of the offences referred to as fraud are covered by the Theft Acts of 1968 and 1978. The term is used to describe such acts as deception, bribery, forgery, extortion, corruption, theft, conspiracy, embezzlement, misappropriation, false representation, concealment of material facts and collusion.

“Fraud” is usually used to describe depriving someone of something by deceit, which might either be straight theft, misuse of funds or other resources, or more complicated crimes like false accounting and the supply of false information. In legal terms, all of these activities are the same crime – theft.

Fraud may involve:

• manipulation, falsification or alteration of records or documents;
• suppression or omission of the effects of transactions from records or documents;
• recording of transactions without substance;
• misappropriation (theft) or wilful destruction or loss of assets including cash;
• deliberate misapplication of accounting or other regulations or policies;
• bribery and corruption.

The SCA faces exposure in two ways:

• The criminal act is the attempt to deceive and attempted fraud is therefore treated as seriously as accomplished fraud;
• Computer fraud is where information technology equipment has been used to manipulate programs or data dishonestly (for example, by altering, substituting or destroying records, or creating spurious records), or where the use of an IT system was a material factor in the perpetration of fraud. Theft or fraudulent use of computer time and resources is included in this definition.

SCA Responsibilities

The SCA must undertake fraud investigations where there is suspected fraud by any of the SCA’s officers, committee members or volunteers and take the appropriate disciplinary and/or legal action in all cases where that would be justified.

The SCA will investigate suspected fraud by appointing three Associate members to an investigation panel.    The panel members should, as far as possible, be independent of the case and those involved in it.

Where there is fraud (proven or suspected), the SCA should make any necessary changes to systems and procedures to prevent similar frauds occurring in the future.

All frauds will be reported immediately, however subject to prior approval from the police, certain types or groups of frauds will be reported on an agreed basis. An example would include recurring or high volume frauds being reported at regular intervals. Novel or substantial frauds will be reported immediately.