The financial auditor facing the corruption
Author:
PhD. Alexandru RUSOVICI
JEL:
DOI:
Keywords:
corrupting, record, accounting obligations, fraudulent practices
Abstract:
The auditing standards in USA include, together with frauds and errors, the acts or facts made with intent by managers and operators, alone or together with potential clients: of these acts, considered to be illegal, are mentioned: the inadequate record or with significant delay of some transactions or registration records, payments with cash in hand for unidentified reasons, unmentioned performances, consulting services performed by the employees, offices or affiliated offices, services provided by individuals from public institutions and/or governmental bodies (AUS 333.3-333.15).\r\n\r\nIn performing the audit procedures, as well as in the results assessing and reporting process, the auditor should consider the risk of finding some significant errors in the financial statements as result of some frauds, errors and „fraudulent acts”.(Audit financiar 2000, ISA 240.2; ISA 240.5-7).\r\n\r\nThe financial auditors who performs audit services alone on as part of a team, can confront at any time with seeing some illegal acts or facts of corruption during or after ending the engagement, either at the corrupting agent level, or at the corrupt entity level. We can assume that some financial auditors can be attracted in a possible legal action and of professional conduct on the basis that they should have see, to record, the existence of the corruption when reviewing and auditing the financial statements. In other cases, the auditor responsibility can become explicit when he/she is asked to identify the corruption situations. \r\n\r\nThe issues approached present a huge complexity and can be amplified with any occasion. We do not intend to present an exhaustive analysis of the situations of this kind; we have not the right, nor the competence. Still, we intend to bring into the financial auditors attention some elements and methodologies in order to help them in conducting and performing an explicit engagement, or in establishing the necessary reflexes when performing other audit engagements.\r\n \r\n