This research studies protests after fraudulent elections in a collective action framework, examining the impact of the potential cost, benefit and likelihood of success of protest on the occurrence and intensity of protests. Quantitative analysis of fraudulent elections in about 100 countries from 1990 to 2004 shows that the odds of protest after fraudulent elections are greater when the level of state repression is moderate with a possible backlash effect of high repression, when the opposition is united, and when international monitors denounce election results. The analysis only partially supports the benefit of protest argument. Also, the research uses case studies from Eurasia (Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, and Russia) and mini-case studies from Africa and Latin America to study in more detail the effects of the factors identified in the quantitative analysis and to identify overlooked but important explanatory factors using a set of extensive interviews conducted in the United States and during fieldwork in Armenia, Georgia, and Russia with politicians, domestic and international election monitors, and country experts.

The ne bis in idem-principle was founded in 1984 and is found in article 4 of the seventh additional protocol of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The interpretation of the principle has been uncertain, which resulted in a harmonization of all previous case law on the subject in the Zolotukhin case. The case concerns a Russian citizen who brought his girlfriend onto a Russian military base while being drunk. This action resulted in an administrative proceeding and a criminal proceeding. The Swedish and Norwegian tax systems concerning tax surcharge and tax fraud are very alike and both countries adapt a dual court system. The differences concerning the interpretation are found in four cases from 2009 and 2010, two from the Norwegian Supreme Court, one from the Swedish Supreme Administrative Court and one from the Swedish Supreme Court. Even though there are similarities in the argumentations in the cases there are also different approaches concerning how to interpret the principle. The Norwegian Supreme Court bases its judgements, especially in the second one after the Zolotukhin case, on the prerequisites established by the European Court of Human Rights and the purpose of the principle. The Swedish Supreme Court and the Swedish Supreme Administrative Court bases the judgements on previous case law and refers to the uncertain judicial area and affirms that there is room for interpretation for the national courts. Even though the argumentation in the judgements differ the national Supreme Courts reach the same answer to the question whether the tax systems are a breach of the ne bis in idem-principle. None of the courts finds that the national tax systems are an infringement of the ne bis in idem-principle.

China and its economic development is today something that affects us all in one way or another. Through economic expansion Chinese companies starts to be an important player on the global scene. They are getting an international competitor, co-operating with foreign companies and it has the latest year been heavily invested in by foreign financiers. Conversely, according to recent research a vast majority of the experts claims that the Chinese companies’ financial reporting disclosure holds a low quality. That these financial reports include plentiful falsified information is disturbing the market and prevents shareholders a fair and free view of the companies, it also reduces the control possibilities. Voices have been raised demanding changes to ensure a higher FRQ in the future. But to find the right actions and point out needed changes, the first requirement is finding the roots behind the presumed low FRQ. Experts’ point at different directions, comprising of nine main underlying reasons that are primarily considered affecting the FRQ in negative matters. These nine explanations will be evaluated against each other in this thesis to find out where the main focus needs to be to prevent future falsified financial statements. The nine reasons where it is claimed that China are lacking are: - Legal system -Education -Pressure -Political impact -Ownership structure -Auditing -Low Business ethics -Tax avoidance -Cost reduction This thesis finds that the main underlying reasons behind Chinese firms’ falsified financial stamen are: (1) Pressure – that influences managers and is a great incentive for earnings management. (2) Political impact – the political impact seem to have a substantial negative influence on companies FRQ. (3) Ownership structure – low transparency and hierarchal business structures appears to be biggest problems within the corporate governance. (4) Low business ethics – a too corrupt and non-moral business structure threatens the integrity of the financial reports. (5) Tax avoidance – the unwillingness to pay taxes makes many companies reduce earnings or hide sales to avoid value added tax (VAT). (6) Cost reduction – The high endeavor to keep costs down might in many cases also bring effects on the quality of disclosed material.

<p>My dissertation interrogates the figure of the priestly charlatan in colonial India. It begins in a theoretical register by arguing that the unmasking of charlatans serves as a metonym for the secularizing procedures of modernity. Tales of charlatans' exposure by secularist skeptics promise a disenchanted world freed from the ill-gotten influence of sham divines; such tales evacuate the immanent frame of charismatic god-men, thereby allowing the extension and consolidation of secular power. I trace the trope of charlatanic exposure, beginning with Enlightenment anxieties about "priestcraft," continuing on to nineteenth century criticisms of religion, and then making a lateral move to colonial India. I suggest that by the 1830s it had become difficult for many English critics to extricate the problem of priestly imposture from the broader problematic of empire and, more specifically, from the specter of the "crafty brahmin." I track the cultural crosscurrents that conjoined English and Indian anticlericalisms, not only to insist on the centrality of colonial thinkers to the constitution of modernity, but also to reconsider modernity's putative secularity. The "anticlerical modernity" that I identify brings religious and secular skeptics together in a shared war on sacerdotal charisma, best observed at the interstices of empire.</p><p>The dissertation disperses the intellectual lineage of the "imposture theory of religion" by rerouting it through colonial India. The imposture theory, or the notion that religion is but a ruse concocted by crafty priests to dupe gullible masses, was central to the emergence of secular modernity and its mistrust of religion. Closely associated with the English and French Enlightenments, it was also pervasive in British polemics against Indian religions. My dissertation demonstrates how in its colonial redeployment the imposture theory came to abut Indic imaginaries of religious illusion, ranging from folkloric spoofs of gurus' authority to philosophical debates about the ontological status of "maya." Starting from religious controversies of the colonial era, my interrogation of Indic illusion extends from the ninth century philosopher Shankaracharya to the sixteenth century saint Vallabhacharya to the twentieth century guru Osho. Its focus, however, is on three nineteenth century religious reformers: Karsandas Mulji, Dayanand Saraswati, and H.P Blavatsky. Through archival research, textual analysis (in Hindi, Gujarati, and English), and theoretical inquiry, I insinuate these three colonial thinkers into the history of the imposture theory of religion. In doing so, my aim is to contribute to scholarship on the genealogy of religion, particularly in colonial contexts.</p> / Dissertation

The constitution stipulates that it is required to establish public health institutions. Among all the public health institutions, public hospital, such as municipal hospital or hospital under Department of Health, Executive Yuan, is mostly closely associated with public health. However, comparing the salaries with other healthcare personnel working in the private sector, it is difficult to attract the top physicians into public hospitals. In order to keep the salaries in public and private sectors in balance, or at least minimize the gap, Department of Health Administration initiated the financial incentive program. There are four municipal hospitals in Kaohsiung City: Kaohsiung Municipal United Hospital, Kaohsiung Kai-Suan Psychiatric Hospital, Kaohsiung Municipal Min-Sheng Hospital and Kaohsiung Municipal Chinese Medical Hospital. Since these four hospitals make distinct profits, the amount of financial incentives the staff received are different. Municipal Hospital pays financial incentives in accordance with the laws and rules passed by the direct authority which is Department of Health, Kaohsiung City Government. In this article, we analyze Kaohsiung Municipal Hospital financial incentive program to discuss the content, defect, suggestions and opinions of the staff, real financial incentive fraud cases, applicable law analysis, and whether or not the program conforms to our current concept of administrative law. This article is divided into seven chapters: prologue, introduction of Kaohsiung Municipal Hospital financial incentive program, real fraud cases, analysis on financial incentive program survey, elaborate on the applicable laws, the financial incentive program and the administrative law concept, conclusion and suggestions. It is hoped to bring up some concrete ideas for improvement, to clarify the applicable laws, to reflect the actual opinions and suggestions of the staff toward financial incentive program, and eventually to perfect the program so it is legitimate under both constitution and laws.

<p>Taxable persons’ right to deduct input VAT is an integral part of the VAT system and may in principle not be limited. Carousel schemes deprive the Member States a great deal of tax revenue, investigations show that up to EUR 100 billion disap-pear every year. In order to stop these trading arrangements and reduce the big amount of tax revenue which disappears every year, some Member States would like to deny traders involved in carousel frauds the right to deduct the input VAT.</p><p>It exist different opinions regarding taxable persons’ ability to deduct input VAT when involved in carousel frauds. The ECJ has given judgements in three interest-ing cases dealing with the right to deduct in case of carousel fraud. In the Optigen case, it was established that taxable persons who do not know or have any reason to believe that they are involved in a carousel fraud cannot be denied the right to deduct the input VAT. In the FTI case, it was concluded that taxable persons in-volved in carousel frauds can be jointly and severally liable to pay the VAT to-gether with the person, actually liable to pay the VAT. A precondition for making a taxable person jointly and severally liable is that the taxable person has to be aware or should have been aware that the transaction made, was involved in such a scheme. If the taxable person did not know or had no reason to suspect this, he cannot be made jointly and severally liable. The ruling in the Kittel case confirms the Optigen judgement as well as concludes that when a taxable person is aware or should have been aware that he is involved in a carousel scheme, he is not enti-tled to deduct the input VAT. If this is the case, it is possible for the tax authori-ties in the different Member States to deny taxable persons this right as well as claim a refund.</p><p>These judgements clarify when the national tax authorities can deny a taxable per-son the right to deduct input VAT when the transactions are made in a chain of fraud. However, another problem occurred, it is up to the national courts to de-cide when a taxable person should be aware that he is involved in a carousel fraud. This decision shall be based upon objective factors, no guidelines or any other help as to what these objective factors should consist of have been published. This creates an interpretation gap for the national courts followed by the risk of having an outcome with different interpretations from the courts in the Member States.</p> / <p>Den avdragsrätt som beskattningsbara personer besitter utgör en oskiljaktig del av mervärdesskattesystemet och kan därför i princip inte inskränkas. Karusellhandel berövar medlemsstaterna på stora mängder skatteinkomster. Olika undersökning-ar visar att upp till 100 miljarder euro försvinner varje år till följd av karusellbe-drägerier. Vissa medlemsstater vill kunna neka avdragsrätt för beskattningsbara personer som är inblandade i olika typer av karusellhandel som ett försök att stoppa dessa arrangemang och för att minska de skatteintäkter som årligen förlo-ras.</p><p>Det finns olika åsikter om möjligheten att neka avdragsrätt för beskattningsbara personer involverade i karusellhandel. EG-domstolen har avkunnat domar i tre in-tressanta mål som rör avdragsrätten vid karusellhandel. I Optigen målet fastställ-des att beskattningsbara personer som inte vet eller har någon anledning att miss-tänka att de är inblandade i en karusellhandel inte kan bli nekade att dra av den in-gående mervärdesskatten. I FTI målet drogs slutsatsen att beskattningsbara per-soner involverade i karusellhandel kan bli solidariskt betalningsansvariga för sälja-rens mervärdesskatteskuld. Förutsättningen för att sådant ansvar skall kunna åläg-gas är att den beskattningsbara personen visste eller hade skälig anledning att misstänka att han var involverad i ett karusellbedrägeri. Däremot kan en beskatt-ningsbar person som inte visste eller hade skälig anledning att misstänka att han var inblandad i ett karusellbedrägeri inte åläggas solidariskt betalningsansvar. Do-men i Kittel målet bekräftar Optigen domen samtidigt som den fastställer att be-skattningsbara personer som medvetet eller som haft skälig anledning att misstän-ka att han är inblandad i ett karusellbedrägeri kan förlora avdragsrätten. Om så är fallet kan följaktligen de nationella skattemyndigheterna neka avdragsrätt för en beskattningsbar person samt kräva en återbetalning av redan utbetalad mervärdes-skatt.</p><p>Dessa domar klarlägger när de nationella skattemyndigheterna kan neka en be-skattningsbar person avdragsrätten när en transaktion är genomförd i samband med ett karusellbedrägeri. Ett annat problem uppstod dock eftersom det är upp till de nationella domstolarna att bestämma när en beskattningsbar person skall ha skälig anledning att misstänka att han är involverad i ett karusellbedrägeri. Detta beslut ska baseras på objektiva faktorer, det finns emellertid inga riktlinjer eller annan hjälp att ta till för att bestämma vad dessa objektiva faktorer skall vara. Det-ta skapar ett tolkningsproblem för de nationella domstolarna, vilket kan resultera i olika tolkningar mellan medlemsstaterna.</p>

每當重大舞弊案件發生時，社會大眾常將矛頭指向負責財務報表查核的會計師，認為會計師並沒有負起他（她）應負的責任，在國際上，如安隆案(Enron)、世界通訊（Worldcom）的隱瞞虧損、線上時代華納（AOL Time Warner）的虛報廣告營收等等事件皆是如此；在我國，也有赫赫有名的博達等案。 會計師的專業與超然獨立的立場，使得簽證功能得到資訊使用者的信任，對投資大眾而言，亦提供一層重要的保障。然而，會計師所提供之合理確信並非絕對之保證，一旦因為某些無法控制之因素造成企業失敗，相關利害關係人無可避免地會將矛頭指向會計師，因此跟隨而來的訴訟將對會計師造成相當大的損失，而利害關係人與會計師的認知差距即為造成訴訟的關鍵因素。 本研究先探討會計師查核舞弊的責任為何?再進一步研究財務報表使用者與會計師間，對於會計師執行財務報表查核時，偵測舞弊責任的認知，同時研究不同人之間，是否存有認知差距。 本研究採透鏡模型觀念，針對學過及未學過審計學的人進行問卷調查，研究結果發現：受試者皆認為會計師負有偵測管理舞弊的責任，財務報表使用者與會計師之間的認知，雖然使用的線索相同，但線索使用的程度仍有不同。 關鍵字：舞弊、會計師責任、透鏡模型 / Every time when there is serious fraud, the public will accuse the audit accountant for not taking the responsibility he/she should take. Internationally, there are Enron and Worldcom concealed their loses, AOL Time Warner overstated their commercial revenues. In Taiwan, there are also cases like procomp. Due to the profession and independence of accountants, the public trusts the opinion they issued toward the financial statements. However, the assurance that the audit accountant provides is highly but not absolute guarantee. Once there is some incontrollable factors lead to business failure, the interested party will blame the audit accountants. Therefore, the follow-up lawsuit will cause a lot loses to the accountant. The gap between interested party and accountant will be the key point to the lawsuit. The study tries to analyze the viewpoints of the interested party and accountants toward the accountant duty of inspecting fraud when auditing financial statements. The study uses questionnaire, taking national university graduated and college students as objects, and discuss by the framework of lens model. The study concluded that all the interviewee think that the audit accountant has the responsibility to examine the fraud. As to the perception of interested party and accountants, on the other hand, though the interest party and accountant own the same clues, they use them to different extent.

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Banking and online financial services are part of our critical infrastructure. As such, they comprise an Achilles heel in society and need to be protected accordingly. The last ten years have seen a steady shift from traditional show-off hacking towards cybercrime with great economic consequences for society. The different threats against online services are getting worse, and risk management with respect to denial-of-service attacks, phishing, and banking Trojans is now part of the agenda of most financial institutions. This trend is overseen by responsible authorities who step up their minimum requirements for risk management of financial services and, among other things, require regular risk assessment of current and emerging threats.For the financial institution, this situation creates a need to understand all parts of the incident response process of the online services, including the technology, sub-processes, and the resources working with online fraud prevention. The effectiveness of each countermeasure has traditionally been measured for one technology at a time, for example, leaving the fraud prevention manager with separate values for the effectiveness of authentication, intrusion detection, and fraud prevention. In this thesis, we address two problems with this situation. Firstly, there is a need for a tool which is able to model current countermeasures in light of emerging threats. Secondly, the development process of fraud detection is hampered by the lack of accessible data.In the main part of this thesis, we highlight the importance of looking at the “big risk picture” of the incident response process, and not just focusing on one technology at a time. In the first article, we present a tool which makes it possible to measure the effectiveness of the incident response process. We call this an incident response tree (IRT). In the second article, we present additional scenarios relevant for risk management of online financial services using IRTs. Furthermore, we introduce a complementary model which is inspired by existing models used for measuring credit risks. This enables us to compare different online services, using two measures, which we call Expected Fraud and Conditional Fraud Value at Risk. Finally, in the third article, we create a simulation tool which enables us to use scenario-specific results together with models like return of security investment, to support decisions about future security investments.In the second part of the thesis, we develop a method for producing realistic-looking data for testing fraud detection. In the fourth article, we introduce multi-agent based simulations together with social network analysis to create data which can be used to fine-tune fraud prevention, and in the fifth article, we continue this effort by adding a platform for testing fraud detection. / Finansiella nättjänster är en del av vår kritiska infrastruktur. På så vis utgör de en akilleshäl i samhället och måste skyddas på erforderligt sätt. Under de senaste tio åren har det skett en förskjutning från traditionella dataintrång för att visa upp att man kan till en it-brottslighet med stora ekonomiska konsekvenser för samhället. De olika hoten mot nättjänster har blivit värre och riskhantering med avseende på överbelastningsattacker, nätfiske och banktrojaner är nu en del av dagordningen för finansiella institutioner. Denna trend övervakas av ansvariga myndigheter som efterhand ökar sina minimikrav för riskhantering och bland annat kräver regelbunden riskbedömning av befintliga och nya hot.För den finansiella institutionen skapar denna situation ett behov av att förstå alla delar av incidenthanteringsprocessen, inklusive dess teknik, delprocesser och de resurser som kan arbeta med bedrägeribekämpning. Traditionellt har varje motåtgärds effektivitet mätts, om möjligt, för en teknik i taget, vilket leder till att ansvariga för bedrägeribekämpning får separata värden för autentisering, intrångsdetektering och bedrägeridetektering.I denna avhandling har vi fokuserat på två problem med denna situation. För det första finns det ett behov av ett verktyg som kan modellera effektiviteten för institutionens samlade motåtgärder mot bakgrund av befintliga och nya hot. För det andra saknas det tillgång till data för forskning rörande bedrägeridetektering, vilket hämmar utvecklingen inom området.I huvuddelen av avhandlingen ligger tonvikten på att studera ”hela” incidenthanteringsprocessen istället för att fokusera på en teknik i taget. I den första artikeln presenterar vi ett verktyg som gör det möjligt att mäta effektiviteten i incidenthanteringsprocessen. Vi kallar detta verktyg för ”incident response tree” (IRT) eller ”incidenthanteringsträd”. I den andra artikeln presenterar vi ett flertal scenarier som är relevanta för riskhantering av finansiella nättjänster med hjälp av IRT. Vi utvecklar också en kompletterande modell som är inspirerad av befintliga modeller för att mäta kreditrisk. Med hjälp av scenarioberoende mått för ”förväntat bedrägeri” och ”value at risk”, har vi möjlighet att jämföra risker mellan olika nättjänster. Slutligen, i den tredje artikeln, skapar vi ett agentbaserat simuleringsverktyg som gör det möjligt att använda scenariospecifika resultat tillsammans med modeller som ”avkastning på säkerhetsinvesteringar” för att stödja beslut om framtida investeringar i motåtgärder.I den andra delen av avhandlingen utvecklar vi en metod för att generera syntetiskt data för test av bedrägeridetektering. I den fjärde artikeln presenterar vi ett agentbaserat simuleringsverktyg som med hjälp av bland annat ”sociala nätverksanalyser” kan användas för att generera syntetiskt data med realistiskt utseende. I den femte artikeln fortsätter vi detta arbete genom att lägga till en plattform för testning av bedrägeridetektering. / <p>QC 20151103</p>

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