ABSTRACT

This study focused on the Perception in the use offorensic accounting in fraud detection in public sector, with dependent variable as fraud detection and independent variables as; litigation support, investigation service, expert witness, Data mining and forensic tool kit respectively. The specific objectives were to; examine the extent of litigation support on fraud detection; examine the relationship between investigation service and fraud detection; Determine the impact of expert witness on fraud detection; determine the impact of data mining on fraud detection; and examine the impact of forensic tool kit on fraud detection. To achieve this, data were collected based on the research instrument of questionnaire. The response by the various respondents were arranged in rows and columns respectively, which the ordinary least square (OLS) regression analysis was used to examine the impact of the independent or explanatory variables on the dependent or explained variable. The result of the study indicated that litigation support(LS) has a positive impact on fraud detection(FD), forensic toolkit(FTK) has a positive impact on fraud detection, data mining was found to have a positive impact on FD. It was therefore recommended that litigation support as a variable should not be undermined in an organization as this variable has the tendency of reducing fraud in public sector, data mining techniques should be utilized in organisations because it has the potential to solve the contradiction between effect and efficiency of fraud detection.