Kirstin Ridley

LONDON (Reuters), – As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to enter its third year of intensity, corporate leaders have been able to ignore internal vetting processes, justify unethical behavior and pay lip service integrity standards.

EY warns corporate legal and compliance teams that 18% said in the survey that they will mislead regulators or auditors about their bonus or salary increases, an increase of 14% from a 2020 report.

Moreover, 17% of respondents would overlook unethical behavior by third parties while 15% would falsify financial records.

Over half the respondents to the EY 2022 Global Integrity Report stated that they believe integrity standards have either fallen or remained the same over the past 18 months.

A little over half of five people said that the pandemic has made it difficult for them to be honest in their business dealings. COVID-19’s turmoil has long been known to cause fraud and corruption.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a serious impact on integrity standards for companies around the world,” said Andrew Gordon, EY Global Forensic & Integrity Services Leader, adding remote working had raised the risk of fraud and unethical behaviour.

He said that hybrid working made it more difficult to conduct effective compliance monitoring and that fraud risk factors tend to increase during times of crisis.

Only 42% said that unethical behavior by senior executives or top performers in the organization was acceptable to them.

Ipsos MORI, a global market research company conducted interviews with 4,762 managers and board members of 54 large organisations and public agencies in 54 countries. The interview took place between June 2021 and September 2021.

These questions were directed at employees working in financial services, manufacturing, and the public sector. For 49%, the answers were from eastern and western European respondents.