Frauds in financial statements

The financial statements are used to show the performances of the companies. It is important for financial statements users to have reliable financial information because they evaluate and forecast the company's financial conditions and results and also make decisions. The growing number of frauds in financial statements reduces their reliability not only in Lithuania but also throughout the world, because of frauds there are more financial scandals, corporate bankruptcies, the public does not trust companies. The authors of the paper have analysed frauds in financial statements and presented frauds committedment ways, appearanceing causes, symptoms, and reasons motivesin the financial statements. It was has been noticed that fraud is a conscious deliberate act used to obtain illegal benefits, deceive or mislead users of financial statements. Many fraud cases involve complex financial transactions which that are carried out by intellectual "criminals" who have specialized knowledge and criminal intent. Frauds may be committed by in a variety of the ways that are difficult to determine if the company will does not promote demand a responsible management, reliable financial reporting process and effective internal audit function. The most common way to commit fraud is to increase revenue. The main causes reasons of for committing frauds are the desires to avoid taxes and improve the company's financial results. However, it is considered that in practice there are more causes reasons to commit frauds: managers show better results compared to the competitors; unwillingness to be redundant; endeavour to hide bad decisions. The most important fraud symptoms are the worker's behaviour, lifestyle, analytical symptoms, internal control deficiencies, and accounting anomalies. Psychological reasons play an important role in committing frauds.Scientists should submit come up with a detailed fraud prevention and detection methodology, focusing on reducing opportunities for frauds in firms, that which managers could follow them in practice. Management is responsible for the proper and effective internal control and supervision of the establishment and maintenance. The internal and external auditors have to ensure that internal control is adequate and effective to prevent, detect and correct frauds, as well as the possibility of leaving the management to override internal control. The auditors should keep in mind that fraud includes three conditions, known as the fraud triangle: promotion / pressure, opportunity, attitude / rationalization. Understanding these three conditions may provide enable more professional scepticism in assessing the risk of fraud. The authors have came come to a conclusion that the best ways to reduce the probability of frauds in the financial statements are internal audit and internal control system. However, it is known that there isn't any no perfectly functioning internal control system functions perfectly. In order to reduce frauds management must: develop create a strong internal control system to minimize losses due to fraud, prevent fraud, increase the likelihood of their being predetermined detected early; install computer control programs software to reduce the number of fraudulent practices. It is important to know stages in order to reduce frauds: to know committing fraud conditions and symptoms of fraud; be awake aware about of signs of fraud; include audit program in the daily procedures, which can commit disclose signs of fraud; keep track ofobserve all fraud detected fraud symptoms