We thought everything was in place for a successful future but how wrong we all were.
In the opening scenes, Alex Frayn, the former chief financial officer of D-Merton, is explaining how the firm went from high-tech success story to cancelled contracts, profit-warnings and the arrest of its CEO Richard Dalton on bribery charges.
The drama reveals this fall from grace through a series of flashbacks. The starting point is a fractious board meeting. D-Merton has a new chair, Roger Tillman, and is on the cusp of launching the latest generation of its innovative radar system, but there are doubts about the technology and the firm’s value.
Roger is also asking questions about the robustness of the firm’s defences against cyberattacks. Later, the action shifts to TYSL Accountants, D-Merton’s auditors. We see Sam Keating, a junior in the audit team, raising questions about unusual payments to Premintel, a firm that appears connected to Richard’s family.
What emerges is a series of poor decisions, and a lack of oversight and leadership, by D-Merton’s board directors. Along the way, the audience is drawn into a web of fraud, blackmail and bribery involving Richard Dalton and his Director of Global Sales.
At TYSL, the problems are compounded by persistent failures to exercise critical judgement, listen to staff concerns, and adequately investigate red flags. Viewers witness how careers and lives can be ruined by taking the wrong decisions, and how a chain of events takes on its own momentum when no one challenges those decisions.
Brought to life by a cast of well-known television and film actors, the realistic scenarios and relatable dynamics resonate with the audience, prompting them to ask themselves: How would I act if I was told that? What decision would I take? How would I react in that situation?
False Assurance also provides an insight into the potentially dire consequences that may result from a decision to take the ‘easy way out’ of a dilemma and will show how the main characters deal with a series of dilemmas and difficult problems they encounter during the film.
You know as well as I do that we can’t work backwards from the consequences to form a judgment on the accounting.
The film splits into four parts – the breaks provide the opportunity for viewers to debate what they would and would not have done in the same situations.