Chairman and CEO of the Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation(BCCEC)âEUR^Winston Rolle yesterday applauded the Ingraham administration's decision to seek outside help in the ongoing crime fight.Rolle told Guardian Business that law enforcement officials need all the assistance they can get.

"The whole issue of crime is a major one that needs to be addressed,"he said."The challenges that we're having now, we can't afford to take any shortcuts in our approach to how we deal with it.

"So any input and support that we can get from persons who might have gone through similar challenges and experiences would be of significant benefit to us."

Government officials met yesterday with former New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton to discuss strategies in addressing crime.

Rolle noted that white-collar offenses in particular continue to plague the business community.

"Obviously the physical crimes are the ones that get reported in the press more than others, but we still have a major concern about white-collar crime," he said.

"I'm only hoping that it is also a part of the discussion process that we're having when we bring in individuals to look at crime in the country."

Rolle said unfortunately many crimes against the business community go unreported because of fears of negative publicity or becoming a magnet for future crimes.

"The whole issue of white-collar crime tends to get downplayed quite a bit, especially when it comes to anything that has to go to the courts, because companies would prefer not to have their names bandied about in the courts for any reason."

Last year the BCCEC released a survey on crime's impact on local businesses.

Over half of the businesses that responded said they were victims of at least one instance of economic crime in the preceding year, while 67 percent reported that they fell prey to internal employee fraud.

In spite of this, only 5.6 percent of those businesses reported the crimes to police, the survey found.

Yesterday, Rolle said his organization had continued concerns about how crime could affect the bottom line of small and medium-sized businesses.

"When you're in a very fickle economy as we are in now, anything that's going to be an impediment or a challenge to business is a concern,"he said.

"What may seem insignificant can actually be the straw that can break the camel's back and put a business out of existence. So our concerns are always how do we bring more awareness to these things, so that businesses can be better prepared."

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