Fraud prevention and detection. External audits in the organisation of great companies

Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject Business economics - Accounting and Taxes, grade: A, University of Nairobi (School of Business), course: BCOM, language: English, abstract: The thesis deals with the topic how external audits can prevent and detect fraud in great companies' organisation. The logic behind this topic is that all companies may face the risk of fraudulent activities in the organisation. In the early 2000s, accounting fraud was a hot topic for the SEC when several famousfraud scandals at companies such as Enron, WorldCom and HealthSouth shook investor confidence in the financial market. This fraudulent behaviour can lead to the collapse or severely damage a company¿s reputation.

When fraud appears in a company, people will start asking who will be responsible for preventing and detectingfraud. Shareholder or stakeholder who read financial statements believes that external auditors play a critical role regarding the accuracy of the financial statement. It is important to have high quality external auditor in detecting fraud and to investigate existing auditing procedures to prevent the possibility of fraud occurs.