A study and analysis on the role of legal accounting in fraud detection and prevention

Abstract

Forensic accountants are CPAs that look for evidence of crimes and commonly work for insurance companies, financial institutions, and law enforcement agencies. Forensic accountants analyze financial records and accounts that may be used as legal evidence and often testify in court cases as expert witnesses. Forensic accounting is a specialized area of accounting and a challenging one. A forensic accountant investigates incidents of fraud, bribery, money laundering and embezzlement by analyzing financial records and transactions, tracing assets, and more. This study on forensic accounting services and fraud prevention was empirically investigated. The study is vital as it portrays the extent to which the application of forensic accounting services influence the incidence of fraud in health care firms in Nigeria. Two hypotheses were formulated to guide the investigation and the statistical test of parameter estimates was conducted using Kendall’s Coefficient of Concordance. The study anchored on the White Collar Crime Theory adopted a Survey Design Approach. Hence, data were collected using questionnaire survey administered to the relevant accounting sections of health care firms in Nigeria. The empirical analysis of the study indicates that the application of forensic accounting service has reduced the incidence of frauds and has also led to fraud prevention at 1% significant level. Thus, the study concludes that the application of forensic accounting services prevents fraud in health care firms in Nigeria. In lieu of this, the study recommended that adequate internal control system should also be established to have checks and balances among the staff to reduce fraud to its nearest minimum, thereby, restoring confidence to potential and prospective investors. Also, since staff of health care firms in Nigeria are strategic in prevention of fraud, their remunerations and welfare should be made a priority and taken serious. Also, training and re-training of these staff would encourage them to detect early warning signals for fraud activities in the company.