Page 8 - Patisserie Valerie Teaching Note

collapse and the level of misstatement emerged as Grant

Thornton’s chief executive, David Dunckley was questioned
by MPs in a House of Commons committee, the Business,

Energy and Industrial Strategy committee (BEIS). Dunckley

claimed that it was not the auditor’s job to detect fraud. The

resultant debate firmly opposed this view.

Some responsibility however must lie with the company for

not detecting a fraud that could not have happened
overnight but would have been at least a couple of years in

the making. Where were the internal auditing system of

corporate governance?

The unanswered question is, was the business successful

because of the fraud or was it a successful business but

defrauded to such an extent that it couldn’t continue to

trade.