Risk of corruption grows: report

A new report warns of the growing risk of corruption involving criminals working with public servants.

The Australian Institute of Criminology on Friday released a report looking at fraud against the commonwealth over the three years to 2012/13.

The report found fraud had cost taxpayers $530 million and identified 265,866 incidents of suspected internal and external fraud in the time frame.

The most common types of fraud involved social security payments (97419), visa and citizenship (83,765) and tax (127,614).

However the report warned an area of "emerging risk" which came out of the research was corruption and collusion between people in the private sector and public servants.

"The number and cost of collusion-related fraud has increased over the last three years," the report said.

The amount of money scammed from this had risen from $2200 in 2011/12 to $402,764 in 2012/13, with 61 incidents of collusion identified.

The report found collusion was likely to result in greater levels of financial loss, last longer and have greater impacts on morale in departments than other types of fraud.

In March this year, a former bank employee and an Australian Bureau of Statistics worker were jailed over a scheme in which confidential market-sensitive information was used in trades that netted about $7 million in profits.

The AIC also warned of the growing fraud risk of commonwealth grant money and aid programs because of the huge amounts of money involved.

"Further research is needed to explore these areas of fraud risk in more depth."