The Role of Forensic Accounting in Reducing Financial Corruption: A Study in Iraq

Since forensic accounting arose in America, it has become a very important issue by the researchers and scholarsin several countries in the whole world. Financial corruption is the most dangerous factor on the present andfuture of Iraq. Perhaps it's no less dangerous than the terrorist operations accompanied the Iraqi political changestarted in 2003. Thus, such corruption slows down the economic development process and prevents the welfareand the prosperity of the community, which may lead to lose confidence in both the political class and stateinstitutions.While this corruption requires sophisticated ways to fathom, there is a modern method, among others, that couldbe used for this purpose which is the forensic accounting. This study therefore attempts to determine the impactof using forensic accounting on financial corruption. It contributes to the limited existing literature on theforensic accounting where no previous study has been down in Iraq dealing with such a serious issue.Specifically there is a failure of accounting and control methods that lies in the methodology taught in Iraqiuniversities to discover financial corruption cases. This study adopted a correlation research design. Data wascollected by using interviews and questionnaires. The main findings of the study revealed that there is asignificant relationship between the forensic accounting methods and effectiveness of the control and auditingbodies to detect financial corruption cases.On the other hand, the majority of the audit and accounting personnelin Iraq are suffering from poor perception and information of the forensic accounting methods. Therefore, asuggestion was made by the current study that forensic accounting methods should add to the curricula ofaccounting departments in Iraqi universities at both levels of preliminary and higher studies through theoreticaland practical classes.