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Cook the Books

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Idioms, Wikipedia 0.01 sec.
Cook the books
To deliberately falsify the financial statements of a company. This is an illegal practice.

Cook the Books
Informal; to falsify an accounting statement deliberately. Cooking the books usually involves overstating revenue and/or understating expenses. A person can use aggressive accounting to cook the books by using creative ways to make a company look healthier than it is. More directly, a person can simply lie on a financial statement. Cooking the books is illegal.

cook the books
To distort a firm's financial statements. For example, a manager may intentionally overstate sales or understate expenses in order to create high net income.

Cook the books. When a company cooks the books, it is deliberately -- and illegally -- providing false information about its financial situation to bolster its stock price, often by overstating profits and hiding losses.

A company may also cook the books to reduce its tax liability, but then it stirs in the opposite direction by underreporting profits and overstating losses.



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The FBI on Friday arrested two computer programmers allegedly employed by Wall Street conman Bernard Madoff to cook the books in his decades-long, multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme.
The FBI on Friday arrested two computer programmers allegedly employed by Wall Street conman Bernard Madoff to cook the books in his decades-long, multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme.
It is also easier in such places for governing parties to cook the books -- although it would be patronizing to imagine that corruption is a problem only in the newer democracies.
 
 
 
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