The responsibility of auditors for prevention and determination of frauds in the financial statement and perspectives for development of forensic audit in the Republic of Macedonia

Abstract

Forensic auditing is a more recent discipline within the audit aimed at detecting fraud in financial statements. Contrary to the classical audit, which primarily focuses on issuing an opinion whether the financial statements are free of material misstatements, the forensic audit is aimed at detecting fraud. In fact, the forensic audit fills the "expectation gap " that occurs among users of financial statements who mistakenly believe that the audit of the financial statements "reveals everything, " although even in the audit reports it is emphasized that "because of the nature of the audit work some misstatement can remain undetected. " A number of research has been carried out worldwide on the responsibility of auditors to prevent and detect frauds in financial statements that regularly confirm the existence, and lately have suggested to deepen the "gap in expectations " triggered by the growing number of corporate scandals, although the audit standards define in detail the responsibility of the auditor in the context of the fraud in the financial statements. Based on the consideration of the problem of the "gap in expectations" , the need for determining the attitudes of the relevant groups of respondents regarding the responsibility of the auditors for detecting fraud in the Republic of Macedonia has appeared, in order to confirm or deny the existence of the "gap in expectations " in the Republic of Macedonia, as well as the establishment of possible proposals measures for improvement. It is actually the main purpose of research in this paper