Determinants of fraud examination performance: An empirical study of internal investigation reports

Fraud examiners from global auditing firms and local law firms are in the business of private policing by conducting internal investigations in private and public organisations when there is suspicion of financial crime. The business is often characterised by secrecy, and reports of investigations are often difficult or impossible to disclose. Since 2012, we have successfully retrieved 63 fraud examination reports in Scandinavia. Based on these reports, this article presents a statistical analysis of fraud examination performance. Performance was measured in terms of the extent of successful reconstruction of past events and the extent of justification of conclusions from the examinations. We identified three statistically significant determinants of fraud examination performance: the seriousness of the consequences, the relative seriousness of the consequences and the conclusions, and the seriousness of the conclusions.