The Bad Accountant. Offender-accountants and their offenses

Master's Thesis from the year 2018 in the subject Business economics - Law, grade: First Class, University of Portsmouth, language: English, abstract: This dissertation aims to analyze demographic characteristics of the homogeneous group of white-collar crime offenders, who are qualified accountants and members of the UK chartered professional bodies ACCA, CAI, CIMA, CIPFA, CIOT, ICAEW and ICAS. Beyond demographics, the crimes and infringements committed, the victims, the methods of detection, the duration of offense and the damages caused are elaborated, scrutinized and commented. The disciplinary, public administrative and criminal penalty regimes applied to offender-accountants are also subject of analysis.

The study examines 2,596 disciplinary documents by content analysis, that are published online by the UK chartered accountancy bodies, FRC, FCA/FSA and IS between January 2012 and June 2017. The total sample observed encompasses 1,390 chartered accountants.

The findings say that the typical culprit is male, around 45, practicing in a small firm and mainly guilty of disciplinary infringements. In case of financial and tax delinquency, ca. five offenses are committed over four years, causing average damages of £5,000,000-£6,200,000. The study reveals that female delinquency is significantly below the results of prior research. Moreover, a growing population of elderly offenders and enhanced recidivism among accountants are observed that are above official crime statistics.

The author is not aware of any study covering accountants from all UK chartered accountancy bodies. The results provide for opportunities of future research of offender-accountants, elderly criminality, recidivism among professionals and disciplinary policing regimes.