COURSE: FORENSIC ACCOUNTING
COURSE CODE: ACC 416
WEEK: 10
TOPIC: FORENSIC ACCOUNTING AND FRAUD AUDITING
OBJECTIVE: To acquire the knowledge and skills about forensic audit, its reporting and documentation.
THE CONTEXT OF FORENSIC AUDITING
Forensic audit encompasses the examination of evidence regarding an assertion to determine its correspondence to establish criteria carried out in a manner suitable to the court. Auditing has been defined as the systematic process of objectively obtaining and evaluating evidence regarding assertions about economic actions and events to ascertain the degree of correspondence between the assertions and communicating the results to interested users. Auditing involves searching and verifying accounting records along with other evidence supporting financial statements.
Since forensic accounting is the application of financial skills and investigative mentality to unresolved issues conducted within the context of the rules of evidence, the role of the forensic accountant involves information assurance or attestation to the reliability of information. The forensic accountant who is retained to attest to information assertion can carry out the attestation in one of four ways:
(a) Agreed-upon procedures: A forensic accountant will verify the procedures whereby an independent researcher can find out if assertion is true or not.
(b) Review: A forensic accountant will verify that someone did an initial inquiry and used systematic and analytical procedures or not.
© Examination: A forensic accountant will express an opinion about whether a material misstatement is found or not.
(d) Audit: A forensic accountant will express an opinion about whether historical financial documents exist to verify an assertion as true or not.
It should be noted that an examination is called an audit when historical documents like financial