Financial Statement Manipulations in Global Corporations: An Audit-Based Analysiss Using the Beneish M-Score Model

Looking into whether big companies might have tweaked their numbers, this work checks twenty major global firms - half from India, half not - using something called the Beneish M- Score between 2021 and 2025. Data comes from 100 company-year cases pulled straight from yearly reports shaped by accounting rules like Ind AS, IFRS, and US GAAP. All eight parts of the M-Score model go into play here, building full scores then measuring them against the usual line: minus 2.22. Most results? Ninety-five percent sit safely below suspicion levels, meaning these corporate players mostly keep records steady and clear. Yet a few flickers pop up - Apple in 2021, Reliance two years later, Tesla across 2022 and 2023 - with odd spikes tied closely to wild income jumps and stretched-out balances. Looking at different countries, average M-Scores don’t really differ much between Indian companies and others - yet outside India, scores spread wider because of more swings in sales growth and asset quality. What stands out is that the Sales Growth Index matters most when spotting signs of earnings tweaking. Auditors might rethink how they judge danger zones; regulators could adjust filters for red flags; even ESG reports tied to finances get new context. While numbers behave differently beyond India, the core signal stays rooted in how fast revenue climbs or dips.