ABSTRACT
The striking feature of the story of the ‘never prosper’ account is the contrast between the mundane acts whereby the account was created and the catastrophic consequences that followed. Again the system of bureaucratic surveillance did not fail but worked almost exactly as it was intended to. Yet malfeasance on a large scale went undetected for nearly three years, despite the existence of computer generated management information pointing directly to it. Moreover, Barings was destroyed not by the malevolent genius of a computer ‘hacker’ or technically literate insider. It took just a few strokes on a computer keyboard and some routine form filling to set the stage for Barings’ destruction.
