'Fraud costing UK £13.9bn'

Fraud is costing the UK at least £13.9 billion a year - the equivalent to a loss of £330 for every man, woman and child, a report claims.The report, commissioned by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), is the first major official attempt to put a figure on the total cost of fraud to the UK economy and took a year to produce.It said the figure is a "conservative" estimate of the overall losses through fraud and that the true cost rises to £20 billion when estimated losses from income tax fraud, under-reporting and fraudulent applications for EU grants are added.Fraud costs the public sector £6.4 billion a year while the financial services industry, including banks and insurance companies, loses £1 billion and the cost to business overall is almost £4 billion.Compiled by fraud expert and criminologist Professor Michael Levi of Cardiff University, the report was presented to MPs by the Commissioner of City of London Police and Acpo's lead on economic crime, Mike Bowron, and the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith.Mr Bowron said: "Professor Levi and his team have conservatively estimated that in 2005 fraud cost the UK £13.9 billion."But this figure excludes some major areas of criminality, such as income tax and EU fraud, where statistics are simply not available. Adding estimates for these into the mix, it is likely that fraud represents a £20 billion annual loss to the UK."To put this figure into perspective, such losses would pay for an additional 200,000 police officers or save every man, woman and child £330.00 per year."Next week, the Government's response to its review of fraud in the UK will be unveiled and is likely to contain plans for reform of the criminal justice system to deal with complex fraud cases and for a National Fraud Reporting Centre.© Independent Television News Limited 2007. All rights reserved.

ITN | March 7, 2007

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