TY - JOUR AB - Purpose This paper aims to investigate the association between political connections and the audit report lag and whether related party transactions moderate the association between the two.Design/methodology/approach An ordinary least square regression is estimated whereby audit report lag is regressed on political connections, related party transactions and the interaction between the two. Data on the number and amounts of RPTs are hand-collected from audited financial reports. A firm-year observation is politically connected if at least one large shareholder (controlling at least 10 per cent of the votes directly or indirectly) or board member or commissioner is a current or former Member of Parliament, a minister or head of local government or closely related to a politician or party.Findings Findings show that the audit report lag is relatively short for politically connected firms but increases when such firms conduct both operating and loan-type related party transactions. This suggests that auditors understand the incentives for, and the implications of, related party transactions and hence exert additional audit efforts in scrutinizing financial statements: activities that will increase the audit report lag.Originality/value Although a large body of empirical research exists on the determinants of audit report lag, none has examined the impact of political connections. This paper further contributes to the auditing literature by documenting auditors’ evaluation of related party transactions in a developing country. VL - 26 IS - 1 SN - 1834-7649 DO - 10.1108/IJAIM-08-2016-0086 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/IJAIM-08-2016-0086 AU - Habib Ahsan AU - Muhammadi Abdul Haris PY - 2018 Y1 - 2018/01/01 TI - Political connections and audit report lag: Indonesian evidence T2 - International Journal of Accounting & Information Management PB - Emerald Publishing Limited SP - 59 EP - 80 Y2 - 2024/04/25 ER -