Findings – The results indicate that audit committee effectiveness, internal audit effectiveness, the
tone at the top managerial level, and ethical guidelines and policies are positively associated with a
lack of fraud within organizations. Neither auditors’ prior success in fraud detection nor the type of
auditor employed is an influential factor in the absence of fraud. These results are interesting and
counter those of earlier studies conducted in the USA. Also contradicting prior research, the receipt of
unqualified audit reports was not found to be significant in this study.