False Accounting

False Accounting

False Accounting is an offence contrary to section 19 of the Theft Ordinance (Cap. 210). Where any account, record, or document is made or required for accounting purposes, it would be an offence either to destroy, deface, conceal or falsify it. 

Accounting documents can be further distinguished into two categories. The first category includes documents which, on their face, must be made or required for accounting purposes, such as invoices, receipts, ledgers and journals. The second categories include all other documents if the prosecution can prove that the usage of it is for accounting purposes, such as claim form, quotations, etc. 

Further, a person may also commit the offence of false accounting if he furnishes information or produces any record or document knowing that the information is a material particular (being an information that is material for the purpose of the document being brought into existence and used, for example the record of an order when it has been cancelled), and is either misleading, false or deceptive. 

The prosecution does not need to prove that the information is material for an accounting purpose. As long as the document is for an accounting purpose, any false material particular would fall under the offence. 

Examples of false accounting would include a person falsifying a balance sheet of a company by making entries purporting to show that the receivables were of a certain value when they were not. It is also false accounting by making falsified invoices when the transactions do not exist.