Financial crimes

Asia’s largest commodity trader Noble Group Ltd. took on its critics with an open letter defending its accounting methods and valuations of a coal asset.

I’ve worked to identify vendor risk and help companies prevent fraud as a certified fraud examiner for almost 10 years, and it’s given me a unique perspective on how fraud is perpetrated. The fact is, it’s easier for someone to “turn to the dark side” and decide to commit corporate fraud than you may think. Here’s what they could do.

Pope Francis has appointed Libero Milone, the former chairman and CEO of Deloitte & Touche Italy, as the first auditor general of the Vatican, where he is expected to oversee a clean-up of the scandal-scarred Vatican Bank.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed charges against the government technology contractor Computer Sciences Corporation, its former CEO and several finance executives, accusing them of manipulating financial results and concealing significant problems about the company’s largest and most high-profile contract, as well as ignoring basic accounting standards to increase reported profits.

The accountant who signed off on phony audits of Bernard Madoff’s firm for decades became the fourth person tied to the $17.5 billion fraud to avoid prison after aiding prosecutors.

Toshiba Corp. lost $2.8 billion in market value after the industrial and electronics group withdrew its earnings forecast pending an internal probe into improper accounting on infrastructure projects.

PricewaterhouseCoopers has agreed to pay $65 million to settle claims over its audits of the failed investment company MF Global.

Ernst & Young LLP agreed to pay $10 million to settle New York’s lawsuit accusing it of helping Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. hide financial problems in the years leading to its 2008 collapse.

Last year saw a rise in accounting-driven federal class action lawsuits, according to a new report from Big Four firm PwC.

The managing partner of the CPA firm PKF Pacific Hawaii has been charged with 13 felony counts relating to losses of more than $500,000 from his firm.

Filings of securities class actions with accounting-related allegations increased 47 percent in 2014, according to a new study.

An accounting scandal, a failed merger and the departure of top executives would normally make a company toxic to acquirers. Not for Salix Pharmaceuticals Ltd., the subject of a $11 billion bidding war that drove the drugmaker’s stock close to its highest-ever price.

Noble Group Ltd. denied inflating the balance-sheet value of contracts as Asia’s biggest commodities trading house published a rebuttal against allegations by Iceberg Research, an anonymous group that’s questioned the company’s accounting methods. Noble’s shares rose.