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This article aims to focus on the impact of the current austerity measures on UK public sector anti-fraud and financial crime investigative resource capacity building initiative developed over the years to tackle fraud against the public purse.

The article draws on secondary sources of data and available literature on fraud and financial crime.

Fraud is a challenge in the UK public sector but the cut-back on anti-fraud and financial crime investigative resources, given the scale of public sector fraud, the growing emphasis on accountability and the time of austerity with public money more exposed to fraud is arguably a back-door/u-turn policy on zero-tolerance approach in tackling public sector fraud and financial crime. There is the potential of this encouraging more fraud and financial crime against the public sector in the long term if measures are not taken to devise strategies for enhancing anti-fraud and financial crime investigative resource capacity.

The research implication for this article is that it opens an avenue for future studies to examine post austerity strategies for strengthening public sector anti-fraud and financial crime investigative resource strategies to deal with emerging fraud threats to UK public sector.

This article acts as a reference guide for policymakers to reflect on the long-term adverse impact of the austerity on anti-fraud and financial crime investigative resource capacity and capability in tackling fraud public sector fraud.

The paper attempts to present an alternative lens to examining the scale of UK public sector fraud problem rather than relying on headline story of declining fraud in UK.

According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, financial statement fraud represents the smallest amount of fraud cases but results in the greatest monetary loss. The researcher previously investigated the characteristics of financial statement fraud and determined the presence of 16 fraud indicators. The purpose of this study is to establish whether investors and other stakeholders can detect and identify financial statement fraud using these characteristics in an analysis of a company’s annual report.

This study analyses a financial statement fraud case, using the same techniques that were previously applied, including horizontal, vertical and ratio analysis. These are preferred because stakeholders have relatively easy access to them.

The findings show several fraud characteristics, with a few additional ones not previously found prevalent. Financial statement fraud thus tends to differ between cases. It is also easier to detect and identify fraud indicators ex post facto.

This study is a practical case showing that financial statement fraud can be detected and identified in the financial statements of companies that commit fraud.

This study aims to explore the relationship between fraud triangle theory (FTT) and the accounting fraud phenomenon in all listed companies in China.

The CSMAR database is used as the sample, including 16,063 data of all listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen markets for the 2010–2020 period. The authors also use quantitative methods, such as regression analysis, to investigate the relationship between five variables (cover three elements of FTT) and fraud occurrence.

Results show that leverage and liquidity ratios positively affect fraud detection, whereas return on net equity, audit size and independent director percentage negatively affect fraud detection.

This study enriches theoretical research on the causes of accounting fraud in China and is of great significance to the sound development of China’s capital market.

The criminalization of online financial fraud is examined by analyzing the existing literature, policies and state statutes within the context of the cybercrime ecosystem. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate online fraud policies within the USA and the prevalence of such incidents to explore the effectiveness of current fraud policies.

This examination explores policies related to online fraud within the USA by defining online financial fraud incidents within the context of the cybercrime ecosystem and analyzing such incidents with routine activities theory to emphasize the current legislative inadequacies with provisional policy recommendations.

This research suggests online financial fraud is not unanimously conceptualized among regulating or criminal institutions. Although federal regulators have governed financial institutions, federal institutions have failed to account for the capabilities of computer-mediated and technological device use (12 USC §1829).

The limited research analyzing the effectiveness of guardianship that prevents or deters internet-mitigated or dependent financial fraud crimes.

Policy recommendations include but are not limited to mandating federal and privatized financial institutions to disclose all fraudulent activity to all stakeholders (e.g. customers and local and federal criminal justice agencies).

This paper provides an innovative approach using a criminological theory and policy framework to examine the prevalence of online fraud and the regulations enacted to counteract such violations.

This paper aims to study the explanatory power of demographics, financial behaviors and financial literacy on instances of consumer financial fraud (CFF) among Emirati households.

This study is based on a survey applied to the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE’s) largest federal higher education institution. The authors analyzed the data using generalized linear models, specifically generalized regressions based on both the logit and the probit models. Independent sample tests were also applied to compare the different subgroups considered in this study.

The authors found that the CFF victims seem to be older with more years of post-secondary education and high monthly credit card balances. When analyzing the probability of Emirati students becoming CFF victims, the authors found that only age, instances of lack of monthly income to cover living costs, and average monthly credit card balance, all have significant and positive explanatory power on the probability of becoming a CFF victim. However, when analyzing the aggregate subsample of all Emirati respondents, only the credit card balance has a positive and significant relationship with such a probability.

The authors used a non-probability sampling method that produced some biases, including a gender bias and an age-related bias. These biases preclude us from making valid inferences and generalizations about the Emirati population.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, no previous research article has studied CFF in the UAE, which constitutes this study’s original contribution.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether large blockholders are associated with financial statement fraud at their companies. Although a substantial body of prior studies has focused on chief executive officers’ motivations to manipulate financial statements, the correlation between majority shareholders and financial statement fraud has received little attention. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating whether the sample firms have controlling shareholders or executives (i.e. blockholders vs management) and whether financial statement fraud schemes, motivations and consequences differ between blockholder- and management-controlled firms.

Using a clinical approach, the authors Study 12 Canadian financial statement fraud cases uncovered by the Ontario Securities Commission between 1997 and 2020.

First, the authors find blockholder control in six cases. These findings infer that these large shareholders received private benefits at the expense of minority shareholders. The comparative analyzes suggest that fraudulent firms controlled by blockholders go bankrupt more often than those controlled by managers. The authors also find that improper disclosure is the most common fraud scheme in blockholder-controlled firms.

The authors conduct a deep analysis of financial statement fraud cases to examine the of blockholder control on the likelihood of financial statement fraud. This paper adds new insights to the research on financial crime by investigating whether large shareholders affect the probability of fraud and the extent to which they might do so.

This study aims to examine the influence of attitude, subjective norm and adherence to Islamic professional ethics on fraud intention in financial reporting among Muslim accounting practitioners in the Malaysian banking institutions.

A questionnaire was used for a sample of 121 Muslim accounting practitioners who are participants in the financial reporting process of Malaysian banking institutions. The data are analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

The study found that attitude and subjective norms are positively significant in influencing fraud intention in financial reporting. In other words, the more the respondents were in favour of fraud and perceived that their referent groups would approve or support the behaviour, the stronger their intentions to commit fraud. On the other hand, the result for Islamic professional ethics is insignificant, which indicates that the Muslim accounting practitioners may not be significantly influenced by the Islamic code of professional ethics on their intention towards fraud in financial reporting.

The study adds to the scant literature investigating factors influencing Malaysian accounting practitioners’ intentions for fraud in financial reporting in the banking sector. The limitations include the use of scenario leading to the issue of social desirability bias and the use of purposive sampling technique that limits the generalizability of the results.

The findings provide potential avenues for Malaysian banking sector managers to enhance their recruitment and training programmes and give some insights to the public, especially the banks shareholders and depositors, into the fraud in financial reporting intention of the actual participants in the financial reporting process.

To the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first to examine, in the Malaysian banking setting, the influence of attitude, subjective norms and adherence to Islamic professional ethics on the fraud intention in financial reporting among accounting practitioners. There are few investigations to date on the factors of influencing or mitigating the accounting practitioners’ intention to commit fraudulent reporting.

The purpose of this paper is to understand if forensic accounting techniques and tools could contribute to the deterrence of fraud in financial statements, considering the expertise of forensic accountant on ex post activities and that the traditional mechanisms to prevent this type of fraud have not been sufficient to stop the impact on companies, investors, auditors, employees and on society in general.

This research was carried out using a qualitative exploratory study with a phenomenological approach conducted through in-depth interviews with professional experts in the forensic field.

The findings confirm that the use of forensic accounting techniques and tools could contribute to the prevention of fraud in financial reporting not only when the risk of fraud has been materialized. Similar studies, about fraud prevention addressing the situation under a qualitative approach from the perspectives of its protagonists, have not been observed in the bibliographical review, so this research contributes to expanding the scientific research, the study and practice of forensic accounting.

From a business management perspective, this study contributes a paradigm shift from the traditional ex post forensic auditing activity toward an ex ante activity to improve management control systems within organizations anywhere in the world. Because this study is guided to prevent fraudulent financial statements, other fraud categories such as misappropriation or corruption could be addressed in other studies and various countries.

The purpose of this present study is to assess the impact of intellectual capital (IC) on fraud in listed firms' financial statements on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). In other words, this paper seeks to figure out whether IC and its components, namely, the efficiency of human capital (HC), structural capital (SC), relational capital (RC) and customer capital (CC).

The logistic regression model is used for analyzing the material of this study. Research hypotheses are also examined using a sample of 187 listed firms on the TSE during 2011–2018 by employing the logistic regression pattern based on synthetic data technique. Moreover, some robustness checks are also used to ensure the correctness of the obtained results.

The findings show a negative and significant relationship between IC and its components, including the efficiency of HC, SC, RC and CC, and fraud in financial statements. This means that by investing in the IC and its components, the amount of fraud in business firms' financial statements decreases.

Since few studies are carried out by existing literature, this paper is among the pioneer efforts assessing IC's potential impact on fraud commitment. The findings apply to policymakers to improve the clarity of the business atmosphere of Iran.

There is increasing international concern about the escalation of fraud and, in particular, financial statement fraud. Detecting financial statement fraud and proving such fraud remains an elusive goal. Red flagging is an early warning system that has been used by auditors to determine the probability of financial statement fraud. The purpose of this research project was to survey investors and lenders in South Africa on their use of red flags and to obtain their opinions on the relative importance of individual red flags. A questionnaire was sent to banks that are registered with the Registrar of Banks (representative of lenders) and to portfolio managers registered with the Financial Services Board (representative of investors). The research findings indicate that lenders and investors in South Africa appear to be aware of the benefits of red flagging as an early warning system. A structured approach (questionnaires/checklists) in using them is to be lacking at present. Respondents rated all red flags in the questionnaire as being important. No distinction was discernable among the different categories that were based on the nature of red flags.