What happened to the audit

What happened to the audit

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Mrs Smith’s greed and  dishonesty have brought  disaster to her family.”

According to the judgement  passed down by the court the  fraud began on June 3, 2005, two  months after Mr Smith’s  retirement, when Mrs Smith  arranged for £29,252.60 to be paid  from Glen Dimplex to the  couple’s joint account at the St  Helens branch of Natwest.

More than £2.1m was  transferred into the couple’s  joint account or their individual  accounts over the next five years  without suspicion being raised.

An extra £700,000 was paid  directly from Glen Dimplex to Mrs  Lewis’ Barclays bank account over  the same period.

In the High Court hearing her  65-year-old husband claimed he  had been “duped” and had no idea  where the money was coming  from.

Mr Smith said after the  downsizing of their home and the  subsequent release of equity and  his pay-off and pension he thought  they were “cash rich”.

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By Steve McQueen
19th Mar 2012 11:06

This doesn't surprise me...

Albert Camus (of this site) and I undertake AP audits for large companies across the UK - we are talking household names downwards.

We perform some pretty basic accountancy (eg: supplier statement reconciliations, and contract compliance) and last year we (and our team) recovered over £60 million!!

£18m of this was for one company alone!

The auditors of this one comapny are a big four firm. They often come in and sit near us, but have never asked us anything about what we do and have never questioned where the (material) £18m comes from (I know roughly what their materiality is because I used to work for this big four firm and used to run the audit of the company we are at today)

In otherwords, their audit opinion is wrong and they have been presented evidence that it is wrong, but they have either never realised what they are looking at or don't care.

The fact that the auditors missed £2.8m over several years doesn't surprise me one little bit.

 

Steve

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By thisistibi
20th Mar 2012 08:17

Quelle surprise

The meaningless of a large company audit is well established.  I too used to work for a Big 4 firm and I can state from experience that there is absolutely no way you can audit a properly large company in the relatively few weeks over which an audit takes place.  It does SOMETHING, it can give you more piece of mind than having an unaudited entity, but it's not a comprehensive review that covers every conceivable issue.  Anyone who really thinks that is a bit out of touch with reality.

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By kspratley
19th Nov 2013 12:35

Its all about procedures!

Fraud of this type is not that difficult in companies this size, even on this scale. Due to the size of the company they feel, rightly or wrongly, that their must be a process and procedure in place for every action taken within the business. The problem occurs when a rogue employee uses those very procedures and processes  to commit the fraud. In simple terms, if all the boxes are ticked in the correct manner  then everything must be in order.........

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