Occupational fraud, forensic audit and the research on necessity of forensic audit profession in Turkey

Occupational fraud is defined as ?The use of one?s occupation for personal enrichment through the deliberate misuse or misapplication of the employing organization?s resources or assets.?and great problem for all businesses regardless of size, location or industry. This problem has become a major threat not only for the businesses both also all parties involved and the world economy due to advances in technology and information systems and globalization, great scandals such as Enron and WorldCom have caused billions of dollars loss. Meanwhile, despite a number of regulations made by legal and regulatory organizations for preventing, detecting and deterring of fraud or increasing responsibilities of parties involved, increasingly continued fraud has pushed enterprises to take additional measures and inefficiency of external audit paved the way for the forensic audit practices. The demand for forensic auditors in developed countries, espacially the US, is increasing day by day and businesses hire auditors forensic skilled. In this study, it has been tried to explain what the occupational fraud and forensic audit are, put forth the presence of occupational fraud in Turkey and whether there is a need for forensic audit. For this purpose a questionnaire applied to the audit firms authorized by SPK and the results of the questionnaire showed that the reasons for forensic audit in other countries is also valid for Turkey, there is a occupational fraud in Turkey and the forensic audit can be effective in preventing, detecting and deterring the occupational fraud in enterprises.