Does the Mafia hire good accountants?

[moneyman]

This is from a academic paper that was recently published. The paper itself is behind a paywall but I thought the synopsis of the findings is interesting and worth posting -

"We investigate if organized crime groups (OCG) are able to hire good accountants. We use data about criminal records to identify Italian accountants with connections to OCG. While the work accountants do for the OCG ecosystem is not observable, we can determine if OCG hire “good” accountants by assessing the overall quality of their work as external monitors of legal businesses. We find that firms serviced by accountants with OCG connections have higher quality audited financial statements compared to a control group of firms serviced by accountants with no OCG connections. The findings provide evidence OCG are able to hire good accountants, despite the downside risk of OCG associations. Results are robust to controls for self-selection, for other determinants of auditor expertise, direct connections of directors and shareholders to OCG, and corporate governance mechanisms that might influence auditor choice and audit quality."

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=3957650

[antimafia]

^^^^
I was able to access the paper — no paywall for me.

[moneyman]

^^^^
I was able to access the paper — no paywall for me.

I think I've downloaded too many papers from this website before so I'm unable to download this one.

It seems that accountants in Italy that have ties to organized crime perform better at their jobs, the implication being that working for organized crime requires a better work ethic because the implications of not doing a good job are more severe. It seems obvisous but it's interesting they've proven this to be true.