In the recent news is the story of how Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was removed from office based on corruption charges and not being “honest.” I’m guessing there were some political motivations behind this.
What was reported by only some outlets was one of the key pieces of “evidence.” Some London real estate was owned by his children and his daughter produced a document showing she was not an owner but only a trustee of some offshore accounts. The problem is, while dated in 2006, the font they used wasn’t commercially available until 2007.
This sounds like something out of the young-person mystery. The teenage detective foils the bad guys by showing they used a non-existent font on their old documents (while all the adults debated and argued).
I don’t see things this blatant in the buy-sell world. What I see are people who disguised a business’s profitability by using Adjustments, Assumptions, and Add-Backs (to, of course, inflate the true picture). For more, see my article at http://www.martinkaconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/AAA-not-to-the-rescue.pdf.
The Rotary Four-Way Test starts out with, “Is it the truth” and it’s a great motto to live by.
