The corporate sector “may appear quite beautiful, with wonderful commercials and fantastic accomplishments, but there is an underbelly of scams and frauds,” feels Robin Banerjee, President & CEO, Caprihans India.
Speaking at the Gurugram chapter of the Indian Business Literature Festival on Wednesday, Banerjee dwelt on the reasons why fraudsters commit crimes. “Greed is the major factor,” he said.
“An opportunity to commit fraud, an ulterior mindset to do a crime, and peer pressure are other motivating factors,” he added.
The acronym “GROUP” explains this phenomenon well, he said, and explained, “It’s all about Greed, Rationalisation, Opportunity, Ulterior Mindset, Peer Pressure”.
Banerjee’s recent book, “Corporate Frauds: Bigger, Broader, Bolder,” talks about 350 instances of corporate fraud. He said that the Kingfisher Airlines fraud case changed everything for the corporate and financial world.
He mentioned on the rationale for writing such a book. He quoted, “I write books on negative topics. Around seven years ago, I discovered that many of the profits listed on balance sheets were incorrect. You conduct business, take loans, and invest in stocks based on that, and you’d be shocked to know that how many of them are false. The fraud committed against us on our accounts is merely a portion of the overall fraud. Nobody writes about failures; most stories are about successes”.
Elaborating on phantom capital, he said that India receives a…
