Forum on Benford’s law and statistical methods for the detection of frauds

This forum intends stimulating cross-domain research in Benford’s law theory and robust statistics. Our point of view is introduced in Sect. 2, with the intention to show the rationale and benefit of extending to the statistical community the discussions on the probabilistic and number-theoretic formulations of Benford’s theory. The point of contact between the two scientific disciplines is anti-fraud. We use international trade as a specific motivating domain, for its great societal, economic and policy impact, but especially because it proved to benefit concretely from the cross-domain approach discussed by the forum, as Sect. 3 explains. Section 4 hitches the concrete examples of this dialogue selected by the forum.