Tag: corporate fraud

The South African and other global economies have fallen victim to corporate failures that resulted in devastating effects on investors and the public. When such corporate failures do occur, the role of the auditor is often brought under scrutiny; particularly as it relates to the role of the auditor in detecting fraud, resulting in an increased focus on the audit expectation gap.

Considering the high profile scandals that have dominated news headlines in the last few years, from VBS Mutual Bank to Eskom, it does not seem unreasonable to say that South Africa may have a corporate fraud problem. What’s more, the accounting irregularities that led to shareholders being defrauded and losing significant shareholder value, may have been entirely preventable if the internal auditors had been more empowered, protected and held to the same level of accountability as external auditors, via appropriate regulation of the internal audit industry.