Causas das fraudes: um estudo qualitativo das causas das fraudes nos EUA e UE no século XXI

Abstract

The most popular frauds known in the early 21st century eroded investors' and society's confidence in the financial markets contributing to economic and social destruction. In response to cases such as Enron and WorldCom, the United States of America enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and at the European Union side, responding not only to Enron as well as to the frauds in Europe, several regulatory instruments were enacted. Despite these actions, more recently, the two sides of the Atlantic have again been the target of large- scale fraud cases.

The purpose of this dissertation is to understand the most relevant causes to the eruption of the fraudulent phenomenon in these two geographies and two periods of time (before and after the implementation of SOX). Subsequently, it is also analyzed whether between periods there were changes in the relevance of the causes.

Through the analysis of several cases of fraud and the definition of a group of common causes to trigger fraud, it is made the classification of the relevance of each cause to the eruption of the fraud in each case of fraud.

The conclusions allow observing the tendencies of the more and less relevant causes in the pre and post-SOX periods. The lack of ethical tone at the top proves to be the most relevant and cross-cutting cause of the various frauds, while the passivity of investors is the less relevant cross-cutting cause. When passing from pre to post-SOX, there is a tendency for inflated financial statements to cease to be one of the most relevant causes for giving way to weak internal controls, even though SOX is particularly strong in this latest area. Poor regulation is replaced by overexpansion of the business as one of the least relevant causes after SOX implementation.