Week in review: 28 July - 1 Aug
A week of statistics with fraud cases up and corporate insolvencies down. Also the Inland Revenue started paying up for its bungles, while the financial reporting regulator set out its new enforcement strategy.
On Monday KPMG released its annual Forensic Fraud Barometer, which showed the number of reported fraud cases this year has already outstripped the crime figures for the whole of 2002.
Tuesday we reported that the ICAEW will tell the government that legal privilege, which protect the clients of lawyers, should be extended to accountants and other professional fields, or be scrapped altogether.
In Whitehall, it was revealed that the horribly bungled tax credits scheme could cost the Revenue hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation claims after it started paying victims an average of £70 each.
On Wednesday a survey by Deloitte & Touche into football finances said Premier League clubs looked certain to dominate the European stage in terms of revenue, profits and playing talent, but that clubs in the lower divisions would struggle financially,
Thursday, Accountancy Age exclusively revealed that the new-look financial reporting regulator, The Financial Reporting Review Panel, will call in the reports and accounts of as many as 300 companies each year from this autumn, in a radical break with past practice.
And the controversial accounting rule FRS17 could be behind a three-year stagnation in corporate profits, as companies make additional payments to their pension funds.
Friday, latest figures put out by the Department of Trade & Industry revealed a nearly 5% increase in corporate insolvencies, although figures were down on the year, while company IT networks were again at risk, this time from a dangerous strain of ‘virus spam’ which tricks users into allowing deadly infections into their systems.