Executive integrity, audit opinion, and fraud in Chinese listed firms

Article history: Received 5 February 2012 Received in revised form 15 October 2012 Accepted 31 December 2012 Available online 8 January 2013 We examine the influence of auditors onmitigating corporate fraud in China, which is known to have weak legal enforcement, weak investor protection along with tight control of the media and labour unions. We find that firmswith executives that have lower integrity, indicated by a greater degree of earnings manipulation, are associated with higher propensity of regulatory enforcement actions against corporate fraud in the subsequent year.We show that this effect is moderated by the issuance of a modified audit opinion report by the auditors. This finding implies that auditors can serve as external governance mechanism to discourage executives with lower integrity in committing fraud. Our results have policy implications for further strengthening auditor independence in emerging countries like China. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: G15 G30 K22 M41