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Importance of Forensic Accounting in Countries of Business Opacity: A Means to End Fraud
or the ethical values or characteristics that cause management or employees to
rationalize the fraudulent act exists (Maranjan, 2010).

Fraud can be detected and investigated to prevent the possible damages the activity

can cause. So what advice would a forensic accountant give to a company suffering
from fraud activity? A professional can list four things that can be done to mitigate

D the occurrence of fraud and they include fraud prevention, fraud detection, fraud
E investigation and follow-up legal action or resolution. The anti-fraud program of

C any company should focus on all four.
E
P The past two decades have witnessed significant changes in the business

T environment including globalization, technological advances and now with reported
I high-profile financial scandals, ways to improve public trust and investor confidence

O in financial reports. Emerging regulatory, social, economic, ethical, and legal
N challenges facing the world of businesses contribute to an increasing demand for FA
that encourages accounting.

A study done in October 2003 assures that the demand for an interest in FA will
continue to increase in the future and more accounting programs are being planned

to provide FA education, The business community and the accounting profession are
deeply concerned with reported financial and accounting scandals. However, few to
none research were conducted to study the proper diffusion and implementation of

forensic accounting in the countries of opaque business practices.

Research Framework

Many factors in a country’s business mechanism contribute to the fraudulent

behavior in the financial sectors. For instance, being considered as a tax haven
country with banking secrecy regulations, money laundry activities and low

corporate governance, fraudulent activities become easy to commit. All of this
results in a national wide corruption triggering the need to introduce FA. However,
due to the opaque financial nature of the country and prior to the introduction of

FA, major changes has to be done to prepare the country for the diffusion and
implementation of FA on both the macro and micro levels discussed earlier.

The causes for corruption of which several exist in most corrupted countries as it

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