Accountability in Financial Reporting: Detecting Fraudulent Firms

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate whether there are any significant differences between the means of financial ratios of fraudulent and non-fraudulent firms and to identify which financial ratio is significant to detect fraudulent reporting. The sample comprises of 65 fraudulent firms and 65 samples of non-fraudulent firms of Malaysian Public Listed Firms, available between the year of 2000 and 2011. The study found that there are significant mean differences between the fraud and non-fraud firms in ratios such as total debt to total equity, account receivables to sales. In addition, Z score which measures the bankruptcy probability is significant to detect fraudulent financial reporting.