Complicity of Public Company Auditors in Financial Statement Fraud

Abstract

The numerous cases of financial fraud reporting in recent times have precipitated the outcry of most stakeholders in the business environment for the need to critically examine the parties responsible for the preparation of such reports in pursuance of their interest. This paper studied the complicity of Public Company Auditors in Financial Statement fraud. To achieve this objective, the responsibilities and obligation of the Auditor to detect and report financial statement fraud before their perpetration was reviewed. The study revealed that, apart from the numerous financial statement fraud cases committed by other stakeholders in corporate governance, 23 percent of Auditors were involved in financial fraud cases, implying that some auditors are complicit in financial statement fraud. As a result, this phenomenon corroborates the need for International Reporting Agencies such as International Accounting Standard Board (IASB) to develop more