Question: Can an auditor provide any proactive mitigation against risk of strata manager fraud? One of our schemes had all strata funds stolen by a strata management company in QLD some years ago despite having the accounts audited annually.
Answer: In my experience, fraud at a strata management level is more common where there is a single trust account with pooled funds.
Referring back to the presentation, I think the best suggestion in terms of strengthening the Owners Corporation’s internal controls is making sure that the strata committee are the ones that are approving the expenditure before the payments are made. That’s not going to mitigate against the risk of fraud. In my experience, fraud at a strata management level is more common where there is a single trust account with pooled funds. There’s been quite a few of those in in New South Wales in recent years.
I would also add, I suppose that the internal controls and the technology that banks use these days would hopefully prevent that from happening if a Strata Manager decided ‘I’m going to transfer $40,000 out of Owners Corporation’s account across to my own account’, that would probably ring bells at the bank and hopefully that transaction would be frozen and questions asked the following morning.
This post appears in Strata News #530.
Rod Laws
TINWORTH & CO
E: RodLaws@tinworth.com
P: 02 9922 3660
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