Forensic Audit as an Efficient Means of Crisis Management of Trading Activities

Abstract

The article proposes to introduce into the accounting theory the concept of «forensic audit», which should be understood as the process of studying company’s reporting and economic operations in order to develop measures to respond, manage and prevent fraud on the basis of expert judgement. In view of the scholars’ developments it is proved that forensic audit is not a separate means of control of economic-legal aspects of economic activity, therefore specialists in forensic audit should have complex knowledge in the spheres of: accountance and auditing; economic and financial crimes; modern information-communication technologies, psychology and other social sciences; criminology and deviantology. As a result of comparison of the main features of external audit, internal control and forensic audit (as an element of system of internal audit), it is proved that forensic audit is perspective and can be used to identify anomalies by establishing compliance of events of financial strategy and modeling deviations of the predicted results from the basic financial strategy. Research on the purpose of forensic audit, its subject, objects, normative base, periodicity of conducting and other essential characteristics is proposed to be performed at trading enterprises within terms of the authority of internal audit department. In order to prevent problems related to infringement of property of a trading enterprise and its improper use, as well as to collect evidence on the already accomplished violations, it is suggested to use the developed algorithm of identification of economic crimes in the system of forensic audit.

Keywords

• internal audit
• forensic audit
• external audit
• internal control
• economic crimes
• fraud
• trading enterprises
• algorithm of identification of economic crimes