Manipulating Financial Statements, a Greek Case Study

The goal of study is to identify the phenomenon of the manipulation of financial statements in the modern business world and in particular the study of the case of fraud by Folli-Follie, which led to bankruptcy in 2019 in Greece. The manipulation of financial statements and fraud in general in financial reporting is a phenomenon that has been intensifying in recent years. In this regard, professionals in the field of auditing and accounting have developed a variety of tools to be able to determine whether there is manipulation of the financial report. In the present paper and for the purposes it performs, an extensive literary review of the existing literature regarding the phenomenon of manipulation of financial statements is made. Next, the case of fraud is studied by the company Folli-Follie with the competitor company Pandora with the Benish - Score method (1999), for the control of financial statement manipulation for the years 2009 - 2018. At the same time, the Altman Z-Score index (2000) is also studied to determine the degree of viability, which in combination with statistical analysis leads to the conclusion that manipulation can be predicted with these score tools in dealing with a possible bankruptcy of a company. With this study the importance of research into the manipulation of financial statements in companies has been statistically approved. Also, this paper demonstrates that manipulation temporarily partially contributes to a firm's viability, but over time the firm faces the possibility of bankruptcy