Fraudsters are laying more false trails

A jump in the number of fraudulent financial transactions - the highest in five years - suggests criminals are using more complicated methods to cover their tracks, the city's graft buster says.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption's forensic accounting group handled just 79 financial fraud cases in the first 11 months of the year - a drop from 122 for all of 2011. But the number of transactions involved was 21,000 - the highest since 2007, when there were only 6,776 transactions in 185 cases.

This year, each case involved more than 265 financial transactions - more than seven times that of 2007's average of 37 transactions per case.

Melissa Tang Shuk-nei, the group's chief forensic accountant, said the larger number of transactions involved in each case showed fraudsters were conjuring up more elaborate smokescreens.

"They create more items on the accounts to make the accounts appear legal," she said.

The forensic accounting group, which comprises six accountants, helps investigators determine which documents to confiscate, analyses complicated statements and helps interrogate suspects. Its members also testify as expert witnesses.