More recently, the Office of the Chief Accountant has been upstaged by the PCAOB, which negotiates agreements with foreign regulators, issues auditing standards, hires world-class economists (such as Luigi Zingales) as their advisors, and generally gets all the publicity.
To protect against these issues, audits can be conducted to monitor network administrators.
Now, in the middle of the credit crunch, they are found to have issued audit reports of little value.
Without being registered and subject to inspections by the board, the 69 accounting firms and partners around the country together issued audit reports for 53 public companies from November 2003 to October 2005, the S.E.C. said.
During a five-day operation in the Los Angeles area that ended Thursday, more than 120 businesses were issued audit notices.
Corporations have long been required to issue audit statements, but unless you are an accountant and lawyer -- and often even if you have these kinds of training--you cannot make heads or tails out of these statements, with their reservations hidden in footnotes and behind technical terms.
The New York comptroller has issued audits detailing millions of dollars in fraud by private companies that provide special education services to preschool children.
Over the last several weeks, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli of New York has issued audits detailing millions of dollars in fraud by private companies that provide special education services to preschool children with learning, developmental or other disabilities.
During his tenure, he issued audits critical of how the department handled lawsuits and internal investigations.
Western commentators often confine their focus to issues around audit fraud, but there are bigger problems at play.
