FRAUD

On the take

Nearly a quarter of employees have committed expense reimbursement fraud, according to a survey by Emburse, an expense management platform. Of the 1,021 full-time employees surveyed, 24% said they had expensed personal expenses as business ones, and another 15% said they’d considered doing so. Survey respondents were at manager level or higher, or held the titles CPA or lawyer.

Expense fraud is the fourth most common type of occupational fraud in the US and Canada, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, and accounts for 11% of such fraud cases worldwide.

The Emburse survey also highlighted how slow reimbursements can burden employees. According to the results, 40% of respondents said they’d incurred fees, like overdraft or late fees, on business expenses they’d charged to their personal debit or credit cards, 19% said they had to pay credit card interest because of late reimbursements, and the same percentage said waiting for reimbursements caused them to delay purchases or payments.

That’s troubling, given that many employees already feel financially strapped; 62% of respondents said they were “somewhat” or “very” worried about their finances.

Click here for more on expense fraud.—CV

PRESENTED BY DEEL

Got global hiring holdups?

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COMPLIANCE

Quality control

In case you needed more proof that the SPAC boom is over, the PCAOB just sanctioned one of the firms that made it happen. It charged WithumSmith+Brown, one of the dominant players in the SPAC auditing market last week, with “pervasive quality control violations” in its SPAC practice. Withum, which neither accepted nor denied responsibility, agreed to pay a $2 million civil penalty, have its staff undergo training, and allow its quality control to be reviewed by an independent consultant.

Withum’s audit practice swelled nearly 500% in 2021 during the SPAC boom, the PCAOB said. It oversaw nearly 450 audit reports that year, compared with around 80 in 2020. But the firm didn’t increase staff levels to compensate: It only assigned 50% more partners to audits, going from 15 to 23.

Withum isn’t the only firm to face regulatory scrutiny over its SPAC work: In June 2023, the SEC and PCAOB together fined Marcum $13 million over audit deficiencies, mostly related to SPACs. At one point, its SPAC practice helped make it the fifth-largest public-company auditing firm in the nation.

Keep reading here.—CV

SUSTAINABILITY

Going green

Ready for some records not set by Nvidia? The Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE) released its 2024 factbook, and it’s got some good news.

In 2023, a record high of 23% of US electricity was supplied by renewable sources. A record 8.8% of total US energy demand was met by renewables. Also a record: 42 gigawatts’ worth of renewable power, the majority of it solar, was added to the grid. Energy productivity grew 3.8% over 2022.

And, though EV usage hasn’t reached expectations, EV sales set a record in 2023. Close to 1.46 million EVs were sold last year, 50% more than in 2022.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and other government initiatives have helped drive these sustainability gains, the BCSE said, and have spurred investment in green technology. By way of example, they pointed out that in August 2022, the month the IRA passed, only nine clean-tech manufacturing plants were being planned in the US. By December 2023, 104 were. “Recent federal policies have proven to be an important asset in accelerating technology deployment amid a turbulent market,” BCSE President Lisa Jacobson noted in a press release.

To read more on the increase in green energy, click here.—CV

TOGETHER WITH BASWARE

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