Empirical Study On The Role Of Financial Audit In Assessing The Risks Of Money Laundering And Terrorism Financing

In recent years, the scale of criminal activity has reached alarming levels and the globalisation of the financial services industry and advances in technology have made the financial aspects of crime increasingly complex. Money laundering and terrorist financing are most often carried out by economic entities. Accounting professionals in general and financial auditors in particular occupy positions that enable them to fight criminal acts of this nature. The overall aim of the research is to assess the extent to which the financial auditor can contribute to the prevention or mitigation of money laundering and terrorist financing at the level of audited companies, following the adoption of legislative changes. More specifically, the first direction of this research consists in identifying and analyzing the variables that characterize the susceptibility of the involvement of companies, listed on the BSE on the regulated market, in acts of money laundering and terrorist financing in the period 2019-2020 by sector of activity. The second direction of the research aims to assess the extent to which the financial auditor can contribute to preventing and combating money laundering and terrorist financing by identifying and reporting the factors of occurrence of risks of this nature as key audit issues. Statistical methods of multivariate data analysis are used to test the research hypotheses.