From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishcook the bookscook the booksCHANGE/MAKE something DIFFERENTto dishonestly change official records and figures in order to steal money or give people false information The Government was cooking the books and misleading the public. → cook
Examples from the Corpus
cook the books• Officials at the bank were found to have cooked the books.• We've just found out Alec's been cooking the books.• One solution would be to make the cities more habitable, but a much more sure-fire way is cooking the books.• The directors of the company made millions from cooking the books before the fraud investigators caught them.• Martin I hate to disturb you when you're cooking the books, but there's a delivery.• When it came to cooking the books, Dennis was in the Raymond Blanc class.• Lost himself in a welter of ambitions, unsafe buildings, cheaper materials; he cooked the books to make more blocks. 