How much would you try to steal from your employer if you work for ING bank and you’re an accountant? Hopefully most of you would not try to steal anything from your employer but if you were a lady by the name of Rajina Rita Subramaniam who worked for ING in Sydney, Australia for 20 [...]

When you speak with your lawyer, you can say almost anything and be confident in the knowledge that the lawyer will be able to preserve the confidentiality of your discussion. Most people probably assume the same thing when having discussions with their accountant, especially in the context of discussing tax planning opportunities with a tax [...]

Toys R Us is one of the largest toy store chains in the world. It’s very successful and has nearly 1,300 stores around the world. What it didn’t have though was a strong internal control system in their UK purchase ledger department. Between 2006 and 2008, married father of two and accounts payable manager Paul [...]

Gone are the days when auditors were manually checking and ticking lots of pieces of paper. Today’s auditing techniques involve significant use of computers. But how far can this computer use go? Will they be able to predict when accounting fraud is going to take place as opposed to tracking transactions that have already occurred? [...]

It seems that not all accountants are 100% honest. Whilst the vast majority of accountants are  trustworthy there were two court cases in the UK this week that resulted in jail sentences for accountants. Gary Gordon, who previously worked for the Big 4 firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, stole £45,000 from his employer UK Mission Enterprises. He rather [...]

Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York and former wife of Prince Andrew, has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Evidence came to light last week of the former member of the British royal family accepting money in used bank notes to arrange access to her husband ($40,000 as an initial payment of [...]

The UK doesn’t officially use the euro, though there are a fair few shops that choose to accept it voluntarily, and normally at a rather unattractive rate of exchange. This means that although not legal tender, euro bank notes are not an unusual sight on the streets and in the exchange booths of the UK. [...]

The examiner clearly reads a good newspaper on a regular basis and perhaps gets inspiration for future examination questions. Which newspaper do you read? In her article ‘Examiner’s approach to Paper P7 (ACCA)’, which appeared in the January 2007 edition of Student Accountant, Lisa Weaver made the following comments: “A note on current issues – [...]