ABSTRACT
Accounting history is littered with examples of financial information used as a means of deception. The immediate reactions of the business community and investing public are outrage and the demand for more strict controls. Such behaviour is not always met with sympathy. According to Mr Justice Eve, in evidence given to the Greene Committee, ‘these demands, originating in a distrustfulness almost approaching panic, not infrequently emerge finally as undigested attempts on the part of those who make them to shift on to the community at large, or the State, as they prefer to call it, responsibilities resting on their own shoulders’ (Minutes, p.lxxvi).
