AUDIT AS A TOOL FOR PREVENTION AND CONTROL OF FRAUD (A CASE STUDY OF SAPIEM L.T.D YENEGUA BAYELSA STATE)

ABSTRACT
Audit: An audit of financial statement is an exercise whose objective is to enable auditor express an opinion on the account presented by management at the end of the years on whether on his opinion the account show true and fair view or otherwise.
Internal control is the whole system of control, financial and other wise established by government to evaluate and checkmate the activities of the organization at every point in time.
For effective research work the researcher made use of secondary and primary data ,The primary sources of information include response from the respondents through the use of personal interview and questionnaire .the main objective of this research work is To identify the causes of fraud in public parastatals And To examine how audit could help in the prevention and control of fraud.

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The substance of every economic entity depends on its ability to achieve its goal and objectives management for the achievement of corporate goals. Wither or not management will achievement this goal depends on how strong and reliable the growth of any corporate body largely depends on the effectiveness and efficient of the internal control system.
Therefore management has a duty of or ensuring that a strong and reliable control system exists within the organization for accountability and country.

For accountability within the organization the conduct at audit is mentionable. This is because account prepared by management may not disclose fraud deliberately misleading or failed to confirm to regulations. Therefore the necessary of auditing to cooperative organization cannot be overemphasized as thus will help the safeguard of the assets of the organization by detection and prevention of all kind of misappropriation and fraud within the organization. Over the years business and corporate organizations run into problems of liquidation. Bankruptcy and insolvency as a result of not only economic fact in the business environment but as a result of management in adequate and inefficient to mange. The internal activities of the organization therefore creating room for financial malpractice within the organization. Thus many corporate bodies run into liquidation as a result of fraud and misappropriation of funds (working capital) within the organization. These are funds that are supposed to be used for expansion of business activities.

Thus, auditing as a professional activity is to birch the gaps and lapses of management activities and to repent to the owner of business on the financial position of the business.
According to the American Accounting Association (AAA) committee on basic Auditing concept (1971), auditing and evaluating process of objectively obtaining and evaluating evidence regarding assertions about economic actions and events o ascertain the degree of corresponding between those assertion and establishment to interested users. The Nigeria auditing guidance sees auditing as an independent tax the appointed and or in pursuance of his appointment and in compliance within any relevant statutory obligations.

From the above, it is clear that despite need of auditing by management within the organization, government also requires the account are audit annually before they publisher. However there are two objective of auditing in any corporate entity, the primary and secondary objects, the projective of auditing require the auditor to give report on this opinion on account investigated.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
In our present business environment the news of insolvency, bankruptcy and liquidation have become frequency news handling in magazines. Several factors are responsible for those ugly issues. The issue of liquidation is not only attributed to the business environment bur internal management problems. Therefore the following problems are identified
1) The issue of forgery of public fund for personal interest.
2) Lack of sense of responsibility and other forms of social values.
3) Low level of official awareness.
4) Weakness of internal control system to monitor the activities of management.