특별기고논문 : 감리사례 ; 경제적 실질우선원칙의 적용실패로 인한 회계분식 및 감사실패 사례연구

전영순(제1저자) ( Youngsoon S. Cheon ),황문호(공동저자,교신저자) ( Mun Ho Hwang ) 한국회계학회 2015 회계저널 Vol.24 No.3

본 연구는 비상장기업 ABC사가 우회상장을 시도하는 과정에서 수행한 회계분식과 외부감사인의 정당한 주의의무 부재가 초래한 감사실패 사례를 다룬다. ABC사의 주요 회계분식사항은 다음과 같다. 첫째, ABC사는 상장주식을 담보로 제공받으면서 금전을 대여하고 이를 장기대여금으로 계상하였다. 그러나 이 거래의 경제적 실질은 대여가 아니라 해당 기업의 지분을 취득한 것으로써 ABC사는 장기대여금이 아닌 투자주식으로 회계처리 했어야 한다. 둘째, ABC사는 외부투자자들이 주식매도청구권을 행사함에 따라 제3자로 하여금 자사 주식을 인수하도록 자금을 지원하고 이를 제3자에 대한 미수금으로 계상하였다. 그러나 이 거래의 경제적 실질은 제3자의 명의를 빌려 자사 주식을 취득한 것으로써 ABC사는 미수금이 아니라 자기주식으로 회계처리 했어야 한다. 한편 감리과정에서 밝혀진 내용에 의하면, ABC사의 외부감사인이 정당한 주의의무를 가지고 감사를 수행했더라면 위 거래의 경제적 실질을 제대로 파악할 수 있었던 상황이었다. 그러나 감사인은 전문가적 의구심을 견지하지 못하고 의심스러운 상황을 간과함으로써 감사실패를 초래하였다. 일반적으로 감리사례는 가공자산의 계상이나 비용의 과소 계상과 같이 기업의 고의적인 회계분식에 대해 감사인이 수행한 부실감사에 초점을 맞추었다. 이에 비해 본 사례연구는 거래의 법적 형식과 경제적 실질이 다른 상황에서 경제적 실질을 반영하는 회계처리가 어떻 게 적용되어야 하는지를 주요 쟁점으로 다루고 있다는 점에서 차별성이 있다. 따라서 본 연구는 경제적 실질을 우선하는 회계의 일반원칙과 더불어 감사인이 감사업무를 수행함에 있어서 견지해야 할 전문가적 의구심을 구체적으로 논의해 볼 수 있는 유용한 교육사례라 고 할 수 있다. The basic premise of faithful representation is ``substance over form`` when a legal form of a transaction differs from the economic substance of the underlying transaction. Through accounting frauds and audit failure of ABC Co., this study examines how non-adherence to substance over form could result in misleading financial statements. ABC Co.(hereafter ``ABC``) was established in 1999 to sell eyewear and to franchise its business. Since its establishment, ABC expanded the business by merging other companies and became an industry leader with largest franchisees by 2007. In 2008, ABC was listed on the KOSDAQ market through the reverse takeover. However, ABC was delisted from the KOSDAQ market in 2010 due to failed risk management and funding for the back-door listing beyond its financial capacity. ABC had committed many accounting frauds in the process of the back-door listing and this study discusses three major frauds. The first accounting fraud is related to an acquisition of equity ownership of DEC Co.(hereafter ``DEC``). In early 2008, ABC made a loan to DEC and received stock of SHELL Co.(hereafter ``SHELL``) which was owned by DEC as a collateral for the loan. ABC accounted for this transaction as a long-term loan in accordance with the legal form. However, the economic substance of the underlying transaction was that ABC purchased 100% of equity ownership of DEC. The second accounting fraud is related to purchases of its own preferredstock. After the acquisition of equity ownership of DEC, ABC acquired control over SHELL, a KOSDAQ listed company, and a reverse takeover took place in December 2008. In this process, ABC issued preferred stock with an embedded put option to finance the deals. As investors exercised the put option later, the third party purchased the preferred stock of ABC from investors and the purchase was partially funded by ABC. While ABC accounted for this transaction as a loan to the third party according to the legal form, the real substance of the underlying transaction was that ABC merely used the third party``s name to purchase the preferred stock on its own account. Third, ABC loaned substantial amount of money to the previous controlling owner of DEC and recorded the loan as if it loaned the money to its customer. ABC recorded such a fake loan in order to cover up an inappropriate loan to a related party. On the other hand, the auditor of ABC assessed accounting treatments for these transactions as acceptable and conducted audit procedures to substantiate legal forms of the transactions. However, the regulator`` audit review revealed that the auditor lacked professional scepticism and overlooked some facts and evidence which could have led the auditor to different conclusions. As a result of aforementioned accounting frauds and audit failure, the regulator imposed heavy sanctions on ABC and its auditor. Case studies on accounting frauds generally deal with fraudulent accounting treatments such as fake assets and unrecorded expenses which has no room for professional judgment. In contrast, this study reviews a case which demonstrates the importance of substance over form. Also, this study provides implications for auditors, regulators, and accounting education. As auditing standards require auditors to apply professional scepticism when undertaking an audit, professional scepticism is a characteristic of a high quality audit. This study demonstrates that auditors`` negligence in professional scepticism may result in detrimental effects on both financial reporting quality of clients and audit quality. On the other hand, the regulator has access to personnel and documents which may not be accessible to auditors. Thus, the regulator should take into consideration facts and evidence accessible to auditors at the time of the audit rather than hindsight knowledge in assessing whetherauditors`` judgements are appropriate or not. Finally, it will be beneficial for students to discuss diverse real-world cases concerning professional judgment on substance over form. This study provides useful cases that can be used in classroom discussions.

초도감사보수 할인이 감사품질에 미치는 영향: 감사인 강제교체기업과 자율교체기업의 차이

최종학 ( Jong-hag Choi ),안성희(교신저자) ( Sung Hee Ahn ),황문호(공동저자) ( Mun Ho Hwang ) 한국회계학회 2016 회계학연구 Vol.41 No.2

일반적으로 감사인은 신규 감사고객을 유치하는 과정에서 일정의 보수할인을 제공하는 것으로 알려져 있다. 선행연구에 따르면, 이러한 초도감사보수할인은 교체 첫 연도의 감사품질에 부정적인 영향을 미칠 가능성도 존재하는 한편 이들 간에는 유의한 영향관계가 나타나지 않을 가능성도 제기된다. 이에 본 연구는 초도감사보수할인과 감사품질의 관련성이 감사인 교체사유(강제교체 vs. 자율교체)에 따라 달리 나타날 수 있음을 연구가설로 설정하고, 이를 실증적으로 분석하였다. 감사인 강제교체제도가 적용되던 2006년부터 2010년 중 외부감사인을 교체한 1,100개 표본을 분석한 결과, 자율교체 기업에서는 초도감사보수의 할인규모가 클수록 감사품질이 유의하게 하락하는 결과가 발견되었으나, 강제교체 기업에서는 초도감사보수 할인과 감사품질 간에 유의한 관련성이 없었다. 이는 초도감사보수할인과 감사품질과의 관계가 감사인을 교체하는 사유에 따라 다르게 나타날 수 있음을 의미한다. 특히, 자율교체 기업에서는 후임감사인이 non-Big 4인 경우에 초도감사보수할인이 감사품질에 미치는 부정적인 영향이 뚜렷히 나타났는데, 이는 감사의견 구매와 같은 경영자의 기회주의적인 의도가 감사인 교체 의사결정에 반영되어 있음을 시사한다. Prior studies suggests that both frequent auditor switches and long auditor tenure could impair audit quality, through the impairment of auditor expertise and independence, respectively. Although the regulators abolished the 6-year mandatory rotation policy in 2010, it is still debating among politicians and media that the policy should be re-introduced to increase auditor independence. To resolve these conflicting views, Korean regulators adopted 3-year mandatory auditor retention and 6-year mandatory auditor rotation rules in 2003. Under the rules, after auditor change, clients need to hire the same auditor for at least 3 years, but have to change auditor after 6 years of auditor tenure. In this study, we define ‘mandatory auditor change’ as the change after 6 years of auditor tenure, while ‘voluntary auditor change’ as the change that occurred when auditor tenure is 3, 4, or 5 years. Unlike in the U.S. where the potential reasons for auditor change and circumstances surrounding auditor change are publicly reported through Form 8-K report, in Korea, any information that are potentially related to the reasons for auditor change is not disclosed. However, one can guess that there must be some reasons that clients voluntary change auditors before 6th year of maximum auditor tenure. Especially, clients have strong incentive to change auditors for the opinion shopping purpose. In that case, they are going to hire new auditors who are willing to acquiesce to client pressure (Choi and Chung 2015). In such a case, the low-quality auditors are likely to offer initial audit fee discounts. In contrast, it is less likely that mandatory auditor changes are related to opinion shopping motivations of clients, suggesting that the mandatory changes are less likely to lead to poor audit quality even in the case of low-balling. Thus, in this study, we try to examine the association between initial audit engagement year audit fee discount (i.e., low-balling) and audit quality in the auditor change year for voluntary versus mandatory auditor change clients. Through these analyses, we try to shed some lights into the potential reasons of voluntary auditor changes. We collect 1,100 auditor change observations from year 2006 to 2010 for the empirical analyses. It was the period that both mandatory auditor retention and rotation policy was in effect. We remove the observations that auditor was changed due to auditor assignment by Financial Supervisory Service. We also remove the observations from banking and finance industry and non-December fiscal year-end. Among our samples, 732 observations are those with the mandatory changes (after 6 years of auditor tenure) and the remaining 368 observations are those with voluntary changes. We define the low-balling as the case when actual audit fee is lower than estimated normal fee. Additionally, we use the magnitude of discretionary accruals of client firms, estimated by using Kothari et al.’s (2005) method, to proxy for the audit quality. Empirical results are summarized as follows. First, we find that both audit quality and hour of low-balling auditors is lower for the cases of voluntary auditor change. In general, low audit quality combined with smaller audit hour suggest that auditors exert relatively less audit efforts to lower the audit costs. Specifically, we observe that the poor audit quality occurs when success auditor is non-Big 4. However, in contrast to the case of mandatory rotation, we find that the audit quality is not associated with low-balling. We also find that the magnitude of earnings management was not differ between voluntary auditor change samples and mandatory change samples in the year before the auditor change. Thus, audit quality becomes poorer at the year of auditor change for the voluntary change samples when there exist low-balling. These findings can be interpreted as follows. Client firms opt to change incumbent auditors with shorter than 6-year of tenure (before the maximum length of the tenure) due to some specific reasons. For example, the client may fire incumbent auditor and hire new auditor who is likely to acquiesce to the request of the clients. When there exists low-balling, new auditors are not able to provide high-quality audit service due to the lack of enough resources or independence. However, for the mandatory auditor changes, because the changes are not driven by the clients’ incentives to shop for opinion, there is less possibility that even low-balling leads to impaired independence and thus poor audit quality. These findings have several valuable implications. Most importantly, regulators and practitioners need to aware of the potential audit risks of the clients who voluntary change auditors. Regulators may need to consider the disclosures of the reasons for the auditor changes. Investors also need to be watchful for the such firms.