Pilot Research Study

Fraud and corruption in managing financial resources, particularly those allocated by the European Union (EU), pose significant challenges to maintaining transparency and accountability in public and private institutions. The FRED2 project—Fraud Repression through Education2—addresses these pressing issues through a data-driven approach to combating fraud in EU fund management. This initiative combines theoretical frameworks with practical applications, offering valuable insights into fraud prevention and detection, the importance of identifying fraud indicators, and the development of predictive tools for future applications. Fraud within the context of EU funds typically involves deliberate deceit aimed at misappropriating resources intended for public benefit. Examples range from falsified financial documentation to manipulating project outputs, each representing a breach of trust and a potential impediment to achieving project goals. The FRED2 project emphasizes the critical need for robust systems to identify and manage fraud risks effectively. These systems are essential not only for preserving the integrity of EU funds but also for ensuring that financial resources reach their intended beneficiaries without compromise. The added value of projects like FRED2 is to bring together institutions like AFCOS and academia to meet in a common ground where to share their respective expertise and knowledge. The pilot is the result of this challenging process. It is the expression of almost 20 months of meetings (workshops, study visits, informal meetings) where the task force exchanged ideas and experiences. The pilot project aims to go one step further than its initial objective, i.e. to create a map of concepts for detecting and predicting behavioural and risk profiles; in fact, the pilot project was designed to be the first core of a decision support system useful for institutions in the front line of the fight against fraud.