FORENSIC ACCOUNTING IN THE REPUBLIC OF NORTH MACEDONIA - STATUS AND PERSPECTIVES.

Due to the deterioration of business culture in recent decades, due to constant changes in the legal and financial understanding of the economic situation and the success of companies, the number of unauthorized activities, commercial frauds, corrupt actions has increased. This is a new challenge for accountants. Accounting fraud, embezzlement and financial crime are an increasingly serious global problem. Inaccurate financial statements provide a misleading picture of a company's earnings and financial position. Decisions made by investors and other users of financial statements based on inaccurate financial information cause enormous harm to users of the information as well as to the general public. Therefore, it is in the interest of the entire financial public that the information presented in the financial statements show the true picture of the financial situation of the company. For this purpose, forensic accounting deals with the detection of fraud within a company. This type of accounting involves an investigation of the way the accounts were kept and how the financial statements were made in order to prove or dispel suspicions of possible fraud. The introduction of forensic accounting as a profession is an effective measure not only for the detection of fraud, errors, manipula)tions and criminal acts in financial statements, but also for the estimated level of damage to the company on that basis. The subject of this paper is the exact determination of forensic accounting in the case of financial fraud. The purpose of the paper is to give an idea of the work of forensic accounting in financial investigations which has everything and significance in the detection of false financial reporting and financial fraud in financial statements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]