This fraud policy is established to support increased awareness, understanding and transparency of the control environment to support the detection and prevention of fraud against the Government of Tuvalu.

The Government of Tuvalu has a zero tolerance approach to fraud, and shall promote consistent behaviour by providing guidelines for staff, assigning responsibility for controls to positions and conducting investigations into alleged fraud.

In relation to the commitment to prevent and discourage fraud the Secretary for Finance and Economic Development shall be responsible for the following items:

• a. Developing and maintaining effective controls to prevent fraud;
• b. Ensuring if fraud occurs a vigorous and prompt investigation takes place;
• c. Recording and reporting all cases of fraud to the Audit Committee, the Auditor-General and the Ombudsman;
• d. Taking appropriate disciplinary and legal action in all cases;
• e. Reviewing and updating the systems and procedures which did not prevent or detect a fraud from occurring, in order to prevent similar frauds from occurring in the future; and
• f. Investigating where fraud has occurred if there has been a failure in supervision, and taking appropriate disciplinary action where supervisory failures occurred.