Question about financial impropriety

[SueEllen]

If a company makes mistakes in their accounts for several years (whether deliberately or not) such that audited accounts for previous years need to be resubmitted, and net assets are overstated to the tune of several million, what are the likely outcomes:

1 for the company as a whole?
2 for the directors?

The answer it seems is "It Depends"....

[NotAllThere]

Ask Satyam.

[chopper]

If a company makes mistakes in their accounts for several years (whether deliberately or not) such that audited accounts for previous years need to be resubmitted, and net assets are overstated to the tune of several million, what are the likely outcomes:

1 for the company as a whole?
2 for the directors?

Think Tesco as one live example. Directors being prosecuted for ropey accounting

https://www.theguardian.com/business...counting-court

[minestrone]

If a company makes mistakes in their accounts for several years (whether deliberately or not) such that audited accounts for previous years need to be resubmitted, and net assets are overstated to the tune of several million, what are the likely outcomes:

1 for the company as a whole?
2 for the directors?

Probably nothing in all honesty.

I know of this case which seems similar and nobody got fingered...

Crisis at Semple Cochrane (From HeraldScotland)

I suspect there may have been funny handshakes going on though.

[northernladuk]

A mate of mine worked on a system that he realised had calculated it's profits wrong from day 0 until the day his new system went in.

Did he syphon all the 1/2 cents to his account?

[Fronttoback]

If a company makes mistakes in their accounts for several years (whether deliberately or not) such that audited accounts for previous years need to be resubmitted, and net assets are overstated to the tune of several million, what are the likely outcomes:

1 for the company as a whole?
2 for the directors?

A mate of mine worked on a system that he realised had calculated it's profits wrong from day 0 until the day his new system went in. The number crunchers challenged his calcs - they went through it and they realised he was right and they were wrong. Therefore they had paid wrong tax every year since day 0. They just ignored it and moved on using his numbers going forward. The discrepancies were quite large- unclear if they paid too much or too little tax in past years.

This must happen all the time. Especially in your pension pots!! Those systems are full of bugs. Don't believe the numbers you read on your pension statement.

So maybe they won't resubmit anything. But if there were many genuine mistakes over several years, then you surely would not be consistently over stated, sometimes you'd be under- that's fishy.

[Chuck]

If a company makes mistakes in their accounts for several years (whether deliberately or not) such that audited accounts for previous years need to be resubmitted, and net assets are overstated to the tune of several million, what are the likely outcomes:

1 for the company as a whole?
2 for the directors?

1. A hit on share price.
2. Possibly barred from directorship, although extremely unlikely. Possibly anger at the AGM.

Caveat to above, the the "company" is the EU, then promotions and sinecures to all involved. A personalised set of solid gold keys to the first class toilet on the Gravy Train.

[Moose423956]

If a company makes mistakes in their accounts for several years (whether deliberately or not) such that audited accounts for previous years need to be resubmitted, and net assets are overstated to the tune of several million, what are the likely outcomes:

1 for the company as a whole?
2 for the directors?