Mitigating the Risk of Fraud in Documentary Letters of Credit

• Authors: Hamed Alavi
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Despite the fact that documentary letters of credit (LC) are meant to facilitate the process of international trade, their specific characteristics may increase the risk of fraud while being used as the method of payment in the process of international transaction. Many factors like exclusive use of documents, geographical distance, absence of efficient prosecution, the diversity of legal system at the global level and restricted application of fraud rule can be considered as reasons for LC fraud. While billions of dollars are lost annually due to fraud in the course of LC operations, such vulnerability can result in reducing the global popularity of documentary letters of credit as the main method of payment used in international trade. Meanwhile, it is worth mentioning that fraud risk management is an unexplored territory in the practice of documentary letters of credit operation. Existing research tries to fill the gap in the study on comprehensive methods for mitigating fraud risk in operations with documentary letters of credit by using risk management theory in order to answer the question of how to manage fraud risk in LC transactions? In a quest to answer the research question, the paper is divided into two parts: the first part is dedicated to preventive measures while the latter explores responsive measures of an enterprise to manage fraud risk in LC transactions.

Keywords

EN

documentary letters of credit; fraud; international trade; risk management

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Baltic Journal of European Studies
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 139-156

Dates

published

2016-02-01

online

2016-02-16

Contributors

author

Hamed Alavi

• Tallinn Law School, Tallinn University of Technology Akadeemia tee 3, Tallinn 12618, Estonia

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/bjes-2016-0006