The Role of Auditing in the Fight Against Corruption

Corruption nowadays appears as global problem that commonly observed in both developed and developing countries and which damages the functioning of vital organs of society. Corruption is generally defined as malfeasance of an individual to gain both financial and nonfinancial private gains or for an unauthorized purpose. Determination of the fraud and corruption especially after Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia and Xerox scandals, their discovery and taking precautions to prevent them from reoccurring became an important topic. Fundamentally corruption is a concept directly related to auditing. Robust auditing and accounting standards make it difficult for managers to act derogatorily to the expectations of the shareholders. In fact, accounting standards aim to make financial transactions of an organization (institution) transparent. And the auditing provides the securing of transparency and accountability by the third parties. The goal of this study which was designed conceptually, is to analyse the role of supervision in fight against the corruption. In accordance with this purpose, corruption and conceptual framework of corruption types was first set forth. Then, supervision and conceptual supervision types were explained. Finally, the relation between supervision and corruption and therefore the role of auditing in fight against corruption was scrutinized