Thesis: Audit, Accounting Fraud and the Beneish M-Score

Building on audit experience at PwC, the thesis examines how financial statement analysis and audit can prevent and uncover fraud, through the Wirecard and Steinhoff cases. Applied to both cases, the Beneish M-Score does not flag manipulation: a result that shows the limits of traditional tools and makes the case for data analytics and continuous auditing.

Financial statement analysis, detection of accounting anomalies, auditing standards.

Excel, Python (anomaly detection with scikit-learn).

Profitability, liquidity and solvency ratios, Beneish M-Score, Benford’s law, fraud triangle and fraud diamond, COSO framework.