Under pressure from the government to reveal the surrogate nature of its practices in India, senior officials from PricewaterhouseCoopers have sought a meeting with the corporate affairs minister Salman Khurshid next week to clarify its position.
Following the Satyam scam, the accounting regulator Institute of Chartered Accountants of India had voiced its concerns over the opaque nature of functioning of foreign audit firms in India.
The company’s managing director Deepak Kapoor wrote to the government on May 19 seeking an appointment with Khurshid. In his letter, Kapoor asked for an explanation on the “structure and functioning of PwC global network and its relationship with PwC network in India.”
This is not the first time PwC officials would be meeting the minister. Less than six months after company partners S Gopalakrishnan and Srinivas Talluri were pulled up for the Rs 7,000 crore Satyam scam, the company’s global chairman Dennis Nally had met the minister clarifying the company’s stand.
Later in an interview to FE, Khurshid had categorically said that before the government considers any proposal to allow foreign audit firms full time practicing rights in India, these firms had to spell out unambiguously whether they would be willing to take full accountability for their actions.
“Have the big four actually pitched and said clearly that they want to come and establish full-fledged practice in India? They don’t actually say that. Their stand on the issue so far has been ambiguous,” Khurshid had said.
According to sources, the government is also looking to pass amendments in the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949 to create more transparency and accountability for foreign audit firms practicing in India. Among the options they are mulling is to make it mandatory for a foreign audit firm to get a no-objection certificate from Icai before getting registered as a company.
“We are very clear on one thing that foreign firms have to be made more accountable,” president of Icai Amarjit Chopra had earlier said.
It is unfortunate that council members instead of lobbying for the growth of professsion more often than not lobby for themselves. In some of the cases it can be found that professional practice of council members received boost after they were elected to the councils.These members whould draw lessons from Advocates who sucessfully stalled the appearence by the foreign law firms in the indian courts . The very fact that minister had hinted that NOC from institute is required in case these foreign firm wishes to carry on the practice by registering themdelves as limited companies it self speaks for things to come still president of institute says that foreign firms will have to be made more accountable as if they give any damn to your sound bytes .
In India, the established psyche for thousands of years is the total submission before foreign power. Excepting some exception in some parts of India, we Indians have historically accepted their unquestioned superiority to the detriment of everything Indian-our ancient knowledge, our traditions (mostly labeled and hated by our secularist progressives as “fundamentalist”), even when the whites-who are worshiped by all Indians as deities for the past 200 years-have recognized some of the so-called “fundamentalist” epics, Yoga and Ayurveda as incomparable and rare assets on the earth-and truly ancient.
This precisely is the main reason why the essentially foreign idea of “communism” has become a craze and a status symbol among a minuscule section of the brats of rich people living in comfort and enjoying the best of of all the world and studying abroad and sending their children to the exclusive institutions or abroad to increase their numbers, while systematically destroying the basic and ancient It is in this historical past as well as endangering the sovereignty of India.
It is in this historical context that we must seek to understand and explain the undaunted and brazen insult by this biggest of the BIG-4 of our legal structure and their audacity to ignore the principles of ‘level playing field’. It is also suggestive that this claim of their superiority over the Indian sovereignty is being led and voiced by the native agents/employees of the foreign firm-themselves of Indian origin. This is the latest manifestation of Indians’ obsession for the most abominable history of the thousands of years of foreign invasion and subjugation-the pride in being employed by foreign governments as India-Americans, &c., and by the new masters, the MNCs.
If our civil servants and ministers are prepared to behave as these MNCs’ domestic representatives and order-suppliers, being in their employ, there is no reason why we should object to the PwC’s right to ignore Indian laws and meet none below a union minister to “to clarify its position” and to “to reveal the surrogate nature of its practices in India” thereby clearly sending the message that they have the right to employ any method to further their stronghold in a country which was ruled by the whites for centuries (and also since they give employment to the class of parasite Indians whose contribution to the interests of this country in any case is negative).
This is evident from the silence of the CAG over its repeated awards of very lucrative contracts at prohibitively high costs to these foreign masters and the ICAI’s acquiescence in the superiority of the foreign CA firms over the natives.
In fact, there can be no better example of this than a past President’s joining such an outfit immediately after relinquishing the position of the head of this non-transparent body!
The powerful(pwc, the giant of all Big 4) get away with law – nothing new… Comparing Big 4 with local firms is needless in this context. Going forward, the ICAI may well bring in a new system of regulating the audit firms, be it Indian or foreign, to create a level playing field.
The temerity of PwC in bypassing the laws of India and its gumption in seeking to meet the minister carry the message that these firms do not care for our legal system. Is it possible for an Indian firm to replicate this in a foreign country?
Will any Indian CA firm of CAs ever dream of this liberty and audacity of “explaining” its position to the Minister? Does it not show the total disregard of these foreign entities to all principles of sovereignty of an independent country and also to the requirements of a “level playing field” ? Does it also not nakedly show that these bread-givers of foreign-origin believe that they are superior to the ‘native’ CAs? If any notice has been served on these unwanted and unscrupulous firms helping inter alia big business in India fudging accounts, they must be sternly told by the Minister’s office to submit to the laws of the land and not to overstep their limits?
I hope, the ICAI will protest.