The French Cour des Comptes independent state auditor has produced a damning report on Compagnie des Machines Bull SA, saying that poor management has enabled fraud to be perpetrated: it says that inadequate controls on the commercial side of Bull France has enabled some agents to operate fraudulent deals over several years, costing Bull nearly $1m in 1989 alone, and that the problems with the company’s accounting system, which meant that invoices were having to be prepared by hand, have only recently been corrected; ousted chairman Francis Lorentz, whose supporters see the report as being used as justification for his firing, told Reuter that only two agents were involved in the fraud, and that they had been sanctioned.
