Accounting regulator ICAI has requested investigation agencies CBI and SFIO and market regulator Sebi to share evidences against PriceWaterhouse auditor Srinivas Talluri in the Satyam case, at the forthcoming disciplinary committee proceedings.
“We require help of the CBI and SFIO. We have written to them. We have written to Sebi also. We have requested them to be our witness. They have the records so we have asked them to be witnesses for us,” Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) president Amarjit Chopra told PTI.
The ICAI had initiated the disciplinary proceedings against two PW auditors Talluri and S Gopalakrishnan for their involvement in the Satyam accounting fraud estimated to be of the order of Rs 10,000 crore.
While Talluri has been granted bail, Gopalakrishan is still behind the bars, making it difficult for ICAI to hear the latter before pronouncing him guilty for professional misconduct.
ICAI has already sent notice to Talluri to appear before the disciplinary committee which began its final enquiry on the auditor’s role last month, but Talluri failed to appear before for reasons unknown. The next date of hearing is posted for early next month.
Following the disclosure of the fraud in January 2009, ICAI had initiated disciplinary proceedings against the auditor. The institute also interrogated the two auditors in the jail.
Talluri and Gopalakrishnan during the interrogation told ICAI that they relied on the documents provided by the management and followed the accounting procedures prescribed by the Institute. However, the two are learnt to have been found “prima facie guilty” of professional misconduct.
According to the ICAI Act, members found guilty of professional misconduct could be barred from practice for up to five years or fined up to Rs 5 lakh.
One feels like reminiscing the memories of the recent past in the context of this item, and especially with yet another of the big-4. Newspapers had not very long ago carried a story more or less titled “Tracking Dirty Money:Ernst & Young to help Govt” which made disturbing news, especially as it also underscored the government’s total lack of faith and confidence on its own internal revenue service expertise. First, the Money Laundering Act was deliberately and with ulterior motive of the bureaucracy and its political masters kept out of the purview of the central board of direct taxes. Coupled with the fact that the rules under the Benami Transactions Act are yet to be framed even after the enactment of the same in 1988, the decision to outsource the job of getting to the bottom of suspicious financial transactions to a non-Indian private firm of practicing chartered accountants bodes ill for the revenue administration of the country. While the authorities never disclosed the reasons for this largesse granted to the said CA firm, excessive enthusiasm about globalization, and that too in matters of sovereign revenues, the subsequent events proved that these trends have proved to be most pernicious for the nation in the long run, especially as the decision did never appear to have been taken with the Parliament’s approval or knowledge.
Apart from the government’s utter distrust in its own Revenue and regulatory machinery, and the potential threat to the sovereignty of the country, there is yet another aspect to this issue. Without even seeming to take any meaningful action whatsoever to weed out the corrupt from the system, universally run by and based on the cash-for-transfer principle, no version of software developed by the world’s best consultants could even touch the peripheries of the targeted menace of dirty money.
The point that I am trying to make is that, the institutions like the omnipotent and the omniscient bureacracy made up chiefly of the IAS CAG, the CBDT/CBEC, the SPIO, etc., were silent and interested onlookers while Satyam, IPL, etc., Scams were born and growing up and, like innocent children of God, these authorities were all enjoying their rightful but illegal perks.
After all, humans are born in sin of the flesh, and live in the filth of corruption and immorality all through our lives in sin only. Even today, IPL-Madhuri Guptas-Sumitra Banerjees have not been able to sensitise itself, for political compulsions, against the recurrence of these instances. Because its own leaders/ministers themselves are immersed in the very filth.
Why against PriceWaterhouse auditor Srinivas Talluri in the Satyam case alone, and why not against the past office bearers who were there since the birth of the IPL?