Tag: organised crime

Behind the façade of South Africa lies a brutal shadow world. Mafias, cartels and crime syndicates rule it, locked in a ruthless war over the country’s riches. The tobacco mafia dominates its trade. The water tanker mafia exploits scarcity. The taxi mafia thrives, alongside the hospital mafia and the construction mafia. The kidnapping mafia expands its reach.

Today’s most successful fraudsters aren’t sitting in high-tech labs, they’re sitting in living rooms, using tools as simple as a laptop and a spreadsheet. What looks like a complex, high-level breach of banking systems is often nothing more than basic arithmetic, a few internet searches and a complete failure of global financial systems to talk to each other.

The public understandably believes the construction mafia operates within the traditional construction and built environment sector. However, its influence extends far beyond construction, creating highly negative effects. Criminal elements exploit any industry where they can extort third parties.

Despite being in the business of risk mitigation, insurance firms themselves are often subject to risk in the form of insurance crime. Last year, the Association for Savings and Investment South Africa (ASISA) found that South African life insurers detected 4,287 fraudulent and dishonest claims worth R787.6 million across the board.