Presenting It Better

Processing and organizing large quantities of transactions and categorizing and

aggregating into them into accounts according to their nature or function are the essence

of financial statements. Revenue could be irregularly manipulated, as could assets; while

expenditure and liabilities could be irregularly mis-stated. These kinds of accounting

irregularities are discussed in the last four chapters and in Chapter 8, especially wherein

the perpetrators described tend to make up fictitious transactions, falsify supporting

documentations, conceal genuine items or change existing identities. In this chapter, we

mainly consider accounting irregularities involving the manipulation of classification

and disclosure of data presented in an organization’s financial statements.