Forensic Accounting

Forensic accounting is one of the growing areas in this country’s professional services sector. With the increase in commercial litigation and fraud in Australia, forensic accountants have burgeoned during the 1990s from being an offshoot of audit practices into their own services division in high demand.

Forensic accounting, broadly defined, is accounting services provided in connection with court cases (often the ‘court’ is a commercial mediation service). In practice, it falls into three distinct areas: litigation support, where the accountants are usually asked to make a written valuation on the economic loss suffered by a party and are prepared to be cross-examined in court; investigative accounting, where they seek to discover how funds were stolen or errors were made that lead to an economic loss – such an investigation usually informs the decision to pursue criminal or civil options; and dispute services, where they are attached to a party in a commercial dispute or become the impartial arbiter of a disagreement.

Mark Abernethy