If you wish to game and corrupt accounting, the best way is to dumb down, make opaque, and weaken the standards. The International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation, which sets accounting standards in over 100 countries, is apparently so enthralled to business it may lose funding and power. IFRS is heavily funded by the European Parliament, who now criticize and may defund it. Emphasis added.
Sharon Bowles, chairman of the influential European economic affairs committee and a Liberal Democrat MEP, said: “Questions have been raised by the European Parliament about the governance structures and lack of transparency of these bodies, as well as their close links to the accounting industry.
[Concerned investors] argued that the IFRS rules, introduced in the UK in 2005, had allowed companies, and banks in particular, to hide the build-up of risks on their balance sheets.