This bulletin presents the main findings from the Economic Crime Survey (ECS), a sample survey that examines the extent of fraud and corruption against businesses in England and Wales.

Economic Crime refers to a broad category of activity with the purpose of unlawfully obtaining a profit or advantage for the perpetrator. For the purposes of this research, which seeks to build the evidence base on the scale and nature of economic crime, we focus on fraud and corruption as a subset of wider criminality which benefits from the proceeds of crime or damages our financial system.

There is no universally accepted definition of fraud or corruption: Fraud is generally defined as the use of deception or deceit for personal gain and corruption typically involves the abuse of power in return for payment or other reward.

Due to the clandestine nature of these crime types, official data sources are generally limited to reported offences and tend to focus on specific groups and/or closely defined crime activities. The complexity and challenges of this research area mean that there are many evidence gaps, particularly relating to the scale of the threat.

The Economic Crime Survey (ECS) is an important step in building the evidence base on economic crime. The core aim of the survey was to measure the levels of fraud and corruption experienced by businesses and where possible provide contextual information about the incident, the offenders and how crimes were identified by businesses.

It also explored the costs to business, preventative measures, as well as exploring the overall perception of both crime types in the respondent’s sector. It complements other existing evidence sources such as Action Fraud, the Commercial Victimisation Survey, the Crime Survey for England and Wales and police recorded crime statistics.