They did not provide the information necessary to beef up the battle against corruption, Corruption Watch executive director David Lewis said.

It appeared that the crime statistics categorised much of the reporting of corruption as common fraud.

"However, it is essential to isolate those reports of white collar crime which are, in fact, corruption."

Whenever a case of fraud involved the abuse of public resources it should be logged as a case of corruption.

"Hopefully, this will ultimately lead to an increase in prosecutions under the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Activities Act (PRECCA) which generally carries significantly more severe penalties than do most common law white collar crimes.

"Clearly, correctly identifying corruption in the statistics will better enable the public, the policy makers and the law enforcement authorities to combat it," he said.

It would reveal patterns and hotspots of corruption, the extent to which corruption was reported, and enable the public to assess the relative success or failure of the law enforcement authorities in dealing with corruption.

Despite clear evidence of significant and growing levels of corruption, the volume of reports and prosecutions for contraventions of the Act remained low.

"What is particularly disturbing is the failure to enforce Section 34 of the PRECCA. This is the provision in the Act that obliges those in positions of authority to report knowledge or suspicion of corrupt activities to the police."

Given what was known about the scale of corruption, it was clear there were many people in positions of power, whether in the business or public sector, who were not doing their legal duty by reporting corruption.

"This may be because they are complicit in corruption or because they are willing to sweep dirt under the carpet. Those in positions of authority who ignore their legally binding duty to report corruption should face the full wrath of the law," Lewis said.