POUZDANOST FINANSIJSKIH IZVEŠTAJA REVIZORSKIH KUĆA „VELIKE ČETVORKE“ IZ PERSPEKTIVE FORENZIČKOG RAČUNOVODSTVA

The primary need of financial statement users is to have confidence in the accuracy and objectivity of the data presented in the financial statements they analyse and use as a basis for making certain decisions. The extent to which this need is met is largely determined by audit firms, as the primary controllers of the occuracy and objectivity of the data that companies present in their financial statements. In this regard, users rely on the assessments of financial statements provided by auditors and, based on these evaluations, make and implement their business decisions. However, unlike auditing, which focuses on examining whether financial statements contain materially significant errors and whether they are largely true and objective, forensic accounting investigates fraud in financial statements and examines whether intentional activities by individuals have led to tax evasion, revenue and expense manipulations, and similar irregularities. Forensic accountants carry out their activities using specific techniques inherent to this area of accounting discipline, developed based on practical experience. Given this, from the perspective of forensic accounting, it is interesting to explore the reliability of the financial statements of the largest and most renowned audit firms in the world, which also operate in the Republic of Serbia, namely the so-called “Big Four” audit firms. In this way, this paper establishes a symbiosis between two similar yet fundamentally different accounting disciplines – auditing and forensic accounting.