Page 9 - Auditors Article

Johnson said that the speed at which Patisserie Valerie

collapsed left him reeling with shock, unable to sleep and
struggling to concentrate. “If I was arrogant at times before,

my ego has taken quite a battering since. A very public disaster

such as this shatters your self-belief. You think you are

constructing a reasonably well-ordered life, and then in a

matter of a couple of days it all starts to unravel.” [Bonney, S,
2019]

A couple of months before the collapse Johnson had been
pontificating in his Sunday Times column on the

characteristics of fraud and how to identify such. However,

within a couple of months his company had been sold off and

he had lost nearly £180m of his £240m wealth.

In his Sunday Times column Johnson had written “I used

to trust accountants and auditors implicitly……I believed I was

dealing with experts, but those qualifications can be a cover

for misbehaviours of various sorts – embezzlement, laziness,
incompetence….you need to scrutinize every individual and

take nothing for granted.” [Johnson, L, 2019] On the concept of

trust, he commented: “I received solid weekly numbers,

comprehensive monthly management accounts, and of course
annual accounts that were given a clean bill of health by our

auditors. If ever there were queries, I got satisfactory

answers.” [Bonney, S, 2019]