La relación entre la preposición con y el verbo ir

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2.8.1 CONCLUSION ON EMPIRICAL REVIEW

In spite extensive researches on fraud prediction and accounting standards implementation, to the best of our knowledge, no study has been conducted in Nigeria on the use of International Accounting Reporting Standards as a white collar combating tool. Furthermore, none of them evaluated the key determinants of fraud free financial report nor addressed the issue of why financial reports are not completely fraud free in spite preponderance of accounting standards. This is the knowledge gap this study is addressing.

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Reporting Standards appears to be means for ensuring deterrence and prevention of fraud which is only two of the stages. The rest of the stages appear to be within the purview of forensic accounting. Sutherland (1949) on his part posits that crime is learned from intimate personal groups and that it is not genetic.

We noted that arguably the extant theories on fraud did not establish the extent to which we can rely on compliance with accounting standards to unravel fraud/white collar crimes. This study therefore intends to fill the gap.

2.9.2 International Accounting Reporting Standards

Arguably, the essence of accounting standard is to provide a common set of principles of measurement and disclosure or put simply a guide for accounting policies and accounting methods that should be followed in preparing financial reports (Haskin, Ferris & Selling, 2000 and Ghartey, 2002). Specifically, IFRS are principle based with interpretations and framework adopted and issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). They are designed to provide guidance on format and information contents of financial statements.

Remarkably, it is not only accounting matters that are covered in IFRS, but matters relating to the entire business with a view to enabling users to better understand how the business is managed, what risk/s the business is exposed to and what impact these have on the entire financial result of the corporation.

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Reassuring comments on IFRS as argued by John, Frédéricand Ana, (2004) are that globalization of businesses has brought to the fore the need for financial statements that are comparable in every sense including format of disclosure and treatment of accounting issues.

However, the view of Biosah (2009) held sway in this study. The author posited that one of the ethical issues in accounting is that companies must present their financial statement in an accurate and reliable manner regardless of the standard in which the financial statements were prepared. Strikingly, since the governing bodies of these accounting standards are not responsible for the source of data used for the preparation of these financial statements, the onus is still on the management of these corporate bodies that utilizes either national GAAP or IFRS in ascertaining that their financials are accurate.He went further to say that regardless of what standard is used, all financial statements are primarily management’s ―HONEST‖ representation of the company’s performance. He therefore advices users of financial reports to accept all financial statements with scepticisms and that they should not take every figure in financial statements hook-line-and-sinker, because management’s allegiance is first to their company before the interest of other corporate stakeholders. In other words standards cannot ensure reliability and authenticity of sources of data used in preparing the financial statements.

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Brett (2006) on his part drew our attention to the following pillars that ensure integrity of the data used in preparing financial report namely Accountants’

Education, Auditors’ Independence, Internal Controls, whistle blowing and Corporate Governance.

This study notes that IFRSs do not recognise national peculiarities.In other words it appears that International standards do not adequately reflect economic, social or legal realities peculiar to each nation. Moreover, the standards are one-size-fits-all; micro, small or medium enterprise all must conform to the same standards. Except for some guide lines that IASB is proposing to issue. It is a truism that the accounting challenges faced by Multinational corporations arose as a result of different countries having different accounting standards resulting from cultural settings, legal, economic and political environments peculiar to each country, hence their struggles to harmonise national standards.

We noted further that Nigerian Accounting Standard Board was formed in 1982 on the initiative of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria when it became obvious that many of the International Accounting Standards were not of immediate relevance to Nigerian accounting needs (Wallace, 1988). In other words, in Nigeria global standards preceded the setting of national standards and the global standards did not completely meet the needs of user of accounting information in Nigeria.Therefore, the recent euphoria on adoption of

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global standards in Nigerian financial sector appears to be worrisome as it has brought to the fore the issue of contextual relevance of accounting standards because international differences in accounting standards arose from varying economic, legal, social, and environmental peculiarities of different countries as stated above. The worries appear to be whether or not such peculiarities are no more significant. This study notes that proponents of standards harmonisation have averred that convergence of standards amongst nations is incontrovertible.

Non-proponents on the other hand argue that the above assertion may not in any way justify enforcement of internationally harmonised standards willy-nilly on any organisation whether or not it is a financial institution because the needs of users of accounting information varies from country to country hence the enormity of the challenges in unifying global accounting standards.

On 28th July, 2010 the Federal Executive Council (FEC) decided that Nigerian corporations will adopt IFRS from 2012. In other words compliance with IFRS became mandatory in Nigeria from 2012 but was voluntary before that date. We noted however that the banks have since 2008 started implementation of IFRS in Nigeria especially those that have cross boarder operations especially in the West Africa Sub region and UK. Specifically, FEC phased the adoption of the global accounting standard and is to commence in January 2012 by publicly quoted companies. Other Public Interest Entities (PIEs) are to converge to IFRS

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by 1 January, 2013 and small and medium size entities will converge by 1 January, 2014.

2.9.3 EMPIRICAL STUDIES ON COMPLIANCE WITH THE STANDARDS We reviewed sundry research works on fraudulent financial reports, fraud prediction models and studies on compliance with accounting standards amongst them are: Oghuma and Iyoha (2005) investigated the level of compliance of listed insurance companies to accountingstandards, Izedomin(2001) investigated the level of compliance to accounting standards in the banking industry. To the best of our knowledge no study of IARS as fraud combating tools has been undertaken in Nigeria and as stated earlier this study intends to fill the gap.

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CHAPTER THREE METHODOLOGY

Presented hereunder are the research design, study population, sample size, sampling technique, type of questionnaire, methodology of data collection and analysis, model specification and model estimation techniques used in this study.