"VIVANT" is Accounting Horror: A 13-Year Practitioner Deciphers the "Terror of Misremittance"

In the first episode of the TBS Sunday Theater series "VIVANT," it wasn't the desert that first made me shudder.

It was the large-scale misremittance discovered at Marubishi Corporation.

The story begins with funds sent by Marubishi Corporation employee Yusuke Nogi (Masato Sakai) to GFL in the Republic of Balka. Instead of the intended 10 million dollars, 100 million dollars—ten times the amount—was sent.

That is approximately 14 billion yen—a massive sum of company money suddenly flying overseas.

Of course, as a drama, this is where the real story begins. Nogi heads to the Republic of Balka to recover the misremitted money, and eventually becomes embroiled in a massive tale involving public security, the 'Beppan' intelligence unit, the 'Tent' organization, the state, and his own family.

However, for someone who has been involved in accounting for about 13 years, "VIVANT" was accounting horror before it was an international espionage drama.

1. The "Three Great Terrors" of Accounting Practice

Among the tasks in accounting, there are several terrors associated with moving money (payments).

The first is payment delay.

Failing to pay money that should be paid by the due date. This is not just a simple clerical error. It means losing the trust of business partners and, in some cases, can lead to default.

The second is a cash shortfall.

The bank balance is insufficient for the scheduled payments. Attempting to make a payment exceeding the bank balance results in a remittance error. If salaries, payments to business partners, taxes, and loan repayments are involved, the tension on the front lines rises instantly.

And the third is misremittance.

Paying more than the necessary amount, or sending money to an entirely different account.

If payment delay is the "terror of not being on time" and a cash shortfall is the "terror of not having enough," then misremittance is the "terror of sending money that should not have been sent."

The incident in the first episode of "VIVANT" is exactly this kind of misremittance.

2. How is company money sent?

Here, I would like to briefly organize the flow of company remittances.

Within the company, there is a payment request asking, "Is it okay to pay this amount to this business partner?"Based on invoices, contracts, payment destinations, amounts, and account information, supervisors and the accounting/finance department verify the request.

That information is registered in the core system or accounting system.A core system is like a business application that manages a company's transactions and the flow of money.

Large companies likely use SAP or Oracle, or they may have proprietary business systems built specifically for their own use.

The important point is that payment information approved within the company is ultimately converted into remittance data (such as a CSV file) that can be handed over to the bank. This data is then passed to corporate internet banking or similar systems to issue remittance instructions to the bank.

The issue in "VIVANT" lies at this "junction." It is likely that the legitimate company data was contaminated by hacking before it reached the bank, with the amount rewritten to be 10 times higher.

From the bank's perspective, it appears as though an instruction to "send 100 million dollars" has arrived with the correct authorization and in the correct format.

However, the bank is not an entity that reads the contents of contracts to determine, "It should actually be 10 million dollars, right?"

3. Hacking alone cannot make 14 billion yen disappear

This is where internal controls become important.

In other words, it is a mechanism to ensure that company funds cannot be moved arbitrarily due to the mistake or misconduct of any single person.

For example, separating the roles of the person who enters the data and the person who approves it. Separating the person who applies for payment from the person who sends it to the bank. Requiring additional approval for large remittances. Requiring separate approval when changing a business partner's account information... and so on.

Especially important is the segregation of duties. This means not concentrating authority in one person.

It is not simply a case of "14 billion yen disappeared because XX in the finance department tampered with the system." If the company's remittance processing was indeed tampered with, it is also a problem of internal controls that failed to detect it.

Why did no one at Marubishi Corporation verify the data right before it was sent to the bank—?

Normally, it is necessary to reconcile the approved payment details with the final remittance data handed to the bank. An incident only occurs when there is an organization that lets hacked data pass through as if it were correct.

4. "VIVANT" is a story that depicts the collapse of "standard business workflows"

"VIVANT" eventually expands into a grand story involving public security, the VIVANT task force, the Tent, the state, and family.

However, the entry point of the first episode was something any office worker could imagine: "an irreversible accident at work."

What is truly terrifying in accounting is when company money disappears by going through the "standard business workflow."

"VIVANT" is a horror story about the silent collapse of a company's internal controls.

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