ABSTRACT
Reported cases of financial crime have dramatically increased worldwide and auditing regulations have been strengthened. The role of the auditor has been made clearer in preventing and detecting financial crime. This chapter examines whether these requirements are reflected in the auditor’s actual actions by examining the roles of auditors in financial crime cases in the district courts, and whether those roles have changed over a period from 2017 to 2021 in two countries – Norway and Sweden. In these countries, auditors’ roles are regulated by the law, and the summaries of court decisions are public information. The analysis reveals two main roles for auditors in financial crime cases – either the auditor has issued an auditor’s report to a company where a violation has been detected afterwards or the auditor acts as a witness or expert. Contrary to auditing regulations, the auditor appears to rarely contribute to detecting financial crime but has played an important role in providing evidence in the criminal cases. Our findings are analysed based on institutional logic theory, showing that a persistent gap exists between the auditor’s legally mandated professional responsibility to detect financial crime and the extent to which the auditor carries out this responsibility.
