Last week, we are honoured and grateful to be able to have the opportunity to share our thoughts and to have a sincere and productive conversation with the top management team at the regulatory authority in Singapore about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. Accounting information can be used to inform – or to deceive. We believe strongly that this potential fintech platform that combines accounting data, especially footnotes, with a wide array of contextual information – including unusual related-party transactions; money-go-round off balance-sheet activities; governance, group structure and ownership analysis; textual and linguistic analysis; analysis of event-based “catalysts” (information-based manipulation) and sensitive market announcements (action-based manipulation in prices and volume) – will provide fresh insights and actionable, dynamic, inter-connected analytical information, as opposed to merely descriptive static data or a loose bag of disparate red flags, on Singapore and Asian companies, for the regulator and the public.
Public disclosure of the List of companies in the highest risk decile by the five fraud categories (tunneling fraud; grand capex fraud; M&A deals potion fraud; all-in-the-family expense and liability shift; consolidation craftiness fraud) on the regulatory websites to inform and educate public (Financial Literacy 2.0) can (a) prevent harm before fraud happens, and (b) spur the potentially fraudulent firms to act to improve their corporate governance, e.g. return back part of the expropriated “missing cash”, to get themselves off the List. This will also bring about greater efficiency in the overall regulatory system given the limited resources in going after so many fraudulent cases which may occur and implode systematically during poor market and economic conditions (e.g. the reverse merger fraud wave in U.S. that was concentrated in 2011).
AsianExtractor: Unearthing Accounting Fraud in Asia 