Porcellane in frantumi: una frode contabile nella Venezia del Settecento

This article focuses on the role of accounting information in financial fraud in the ancient regime, in which specific regulations and standards were absent. The authors adopt an enriched version of the “fraud triangle” to correctly identify fraud in such a setting. A microhistorical approach allows them to identify an exceptional case documenting the use by Venetian authorities of accounting statements to disclose a f inancial fraud in a ceramic manufacturing partnership in late eighteenth-century Venice. The manufactory was established in 1764 by Geminiano Cozzi to produce porcelain in Venice and was granted industrial privileges including tax exemptions, subsidies, exclusive rights and workers’ regulations, but after a decade entered into financial difficulties. In order to assure the necessary investments, in 1778 Geminiano Cozzi established a new partnership involving his brother Vincenzo and one of the creditors, Bonaventura Marinoni. In 1784, however, both partners asked for the intervention of the Inquisitore alle Arti to assess the economic and financial state of the company. The Inquisitore highlighted several accounting misstatements in the company budgets and imposed the reorganisation of the partnership under the sole direction of the Cozzi brothers, with new reimbursement conditions for the creditors. The case is analysed to identify the role of accounting information in determining the purpose (incentive), the technical possibility (opportunity) and the consequences (at least as an ex-post rationalisation) of the fraud. The results emphasise the authorities’ use of accounting statements to assess the situation of the company and fix its crisis, rather than to sanction fraudulent behaviours.