Against the backdrop of multi-crore Satyam fraud, the accounting regulator ICAI has sought information from 150 chartered accountant firms, including multi-national corporations, to see whether they circumvented laws while providing auditing services in the country.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India has written to 150 firms seeking information on various issues including on agreement or contract for usage of name of multinational entity, corporate affairs minister Salman Khurshid said in the Lok Sabha.
With regard to Satyam scam, he said the ICAI has constituted a fact-finding committee to look into the entire gamut of financial reporting, accounting, auditing aspects and suggest changes wherever required for the purpose of making appropriate recommendations to government, Securities and Exchange Board of India and other regulators.
“The fact-finding process is on and once the committee submits its report to the ministry, we shall take appropriate steps,” he said.
The ICAI wanted to know the arrangement for sharing of fees/profit with other Indian CA firms with similar/identical name and with the multinational entity.
He said that the multinational firms came here through an automatic route under the foreign direct investment guidelines.
“We are collecting the information and once it is collected we shall analyse it,” he said. Khurshid informed the House that out of 150 firms, 76 have given their documents while others are yet to submit.
The big fours have taken the best route. They involved the Top men from ICAI itself as interested persons. Now a president of ICAI definitely has lot of contacts for which they are absorbed in the big firms and officially paid huge. They are not paid for their knowledge but paid for their contact and the capability to use them in a efficient way.
Is it possible anyway that The ICAI was ignorant about the similar names Issue and MNC audit firms in this age of computerisation. The ICAI should not only teach about ISA should sometimes exercise the same catch a bunch of firms and punish, then only others will be careful.
Now that the “Department of Commerce has stated that as per the revised offer made by India in document dated 12th August 2005 commitments have been made in respect of Accounting and Book keeping services (CPC-862) excluding Audit services.”
The ICAI has woke-up and trying to do all that it can do to ensure compliance.
NOTHING TO SAY !
One sicerely hopes that the ICAI means business and has the professional honesty of not sparing its own past-presidents, etc., if found guilty of complicity in these matters. In fact, one of its past presidents, immediately after remitting his office, joined a firm of one of the big-4:will the ICAI take his case also up?
And what about those who took no action at all in these areas during their tenure? And not very long ago too?
The partners of these Indian firms carry two kind of visiting cards one showing them partner in Indian Firm and another showing them partner in multinational entity .While the fresh chartered accountants are called for interview in the name of multinational entity they are issued employment letters showing them enployees in the indian firm .All this is happening right under the nose of regulatory bodies for such long time and these regulatory bodies are busy collecting information from wrong doers to decide whether they have ciecumvented the law or not