Corporate Governance Implications of Financial Fraud - Dissertation Example

Student’s family name: First names: Student ID No: Course: Supervisor: Dissertation Title: Corporate Governance Implications of Financial Fraud Declaration I certify that this dissertation is my own work. I have read the University regulations concerning plagiarism. I am willing to allow the university to use my dissertation as a sample for future students. Financial statement fraud and Ponzi schemes involving Board Chairpersons and senior figures in public companies wasted billions of dollars of investor capital to threaten markets and public interest.

These scandals forced legislatures and regulators to question whether inadequacies in corporate governance contributed to a higher propensity for fraud and how best to correct these. Although it is true that corporate governance alone is not the only reason for financial statement fraud, it makes sense to try to encourage boards to discharge their responsibilities with due and diligent care. Because a corrupt board will propagate fraud, it makes sense to emphasize the independence of boards from management and independence of individual directors to ensure effective boards.

Only independent boards capable of exercising due diligence without negative influences exerted on audit committees, and auditors can ensure transparency and a commitment to ethical conduct must come from the top. For this dissertation, a literature review and case studies for selected early 21st-century fraud scandals serve to conceptualize corporate governance implications of financial fraud using inductive research. However, the research presented avoids a more extensive study involving examination of a far larger number of fraud cases from fraud databases using statistical methods in an attempt to lean towards conceptual development.

(This page intentionally left blank) CHAPTER 1:  The corporate scandals of the early 21st century shocked the financial community around the world to present an impetuous for government regulatory action to try to correct the prevailing laxity in safeguards against corporate fraud (Causseaux, 2007, pp. 151 – 152). In the United States of America, scandals surrounding Enron, WorldCom, Aldephi, and HealthSouth were a topic of discussion for many even though financial fraud was to continue to prevail in many other parts of the world.