Assessing the Fraud Risk Factors in the Finance Statements with Benford's Law.

Abstract

The aim of this study is research potential fraud risk in financial statements by using some financial and nonfinancial parameters. For detection of fraud risk used conformity of financial statements with Benford's law among different groups of companies. Variables to be met by financial statement liability include sectors, risk groups, size of independent audit firms, independent auditing obligation and independent membership of directory board. To this intent balance sheet and income statements of the companies traded in BIST real sector for the years 2008-2017, taken as data set. Data set were applied Benford analysis for measuring conformity of financial statements with Benford’s law. For analyse difference between groups applied T-Test, ANOVA and TUKEY tests. As a result, investigated significant difference between company groups and variables were found to affect the fraud risk in the financial statements. These results have shown impact of different variables on financial statement as a fraud risk factor. It has expected that these factors are effective in the financial statement fraud. Company owners, professional accountants, auditors and tax authority can use this method for detecting red flags and selecting audit targets.