Search Results for: accountancy

INTRODUCTION 

ACCOUNTING used to be restricted to financially measurable matters of profit and loss; expenditure and revenue; taxes and subsidies; investment and liabilities. But the mathematical and statistical skills underpinning a solid set of books and filed accounts are today increasingly being used to measure the environmental and social sustainability of a product, input, production process and supply chain.…

Accountants in the European Union (EU) are facing the launch of a more intrusive and proactive legal system fighting money laundering (ML) and terrorist finance (TF), designed to stem the flow of dirty money across borders.

These are huge. Impossible to count accurately, but the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has estimated that USD2 trillion is laundered annually worldwide from all types of crime, from tax evasion to sanctions busting and drug trafficking to white collar fraud.…

The UK Home Office has announced the relaunch of its Joint Fraud Taskforce (JFT), with its public-private sector partnerships charged with fighting a 24% rise in fraud during the Covid-19 pandemic (from March 2019 to 2021). (1) The relaunch was accompanied by the publication of new fraud charters “across the retail banking, telecommunications, and accountancy sectors”, said a Home Office communiqué.…

The European Union (EU) has at last, after five years of debates, finalised a country-by-country reporting directive designed to force multi-nationals to reveal publicly what profits they make, and taxes they pay, in each country of operation. The goal is to stop multinationals hiding behind consolidated group financial reports that conceal when they might pay taxes in low tax jurisdictions where trading may be light.…

The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) will consider allowing the amortisation of goodwill, maintain some harmony with USA GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles). A joint US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB)/IASB education meeting discussed FASB plans to allow goodwill amortisation. “Most of those respondents commenting said that convergence on this topic with US GAAP was desirable,” said a meeting note.…

Saudi women are taking up professional roles unimaginable a few years ago, and that includes in accounting, a trend encouraged by the government. A new women’s accountancy programme was launched in March (2021) by the Saudi Organization for Certified Public Accountants (SOCPA), supported by the ministry of commerce.…

The development of trusted digital identity systems, now being rolled out internationally, will strengthen anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing (AML/CTF) controls, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and AML technology vendors have argued.

Global AML body FATF is encouraging AML/CFT authorities to consider using regulatory ‘sandboxes’ to test how digital ID systems might interact with national AML/CFT laws and regulations.…

INTRODUCTION

Accounting software is crucial for any company wanting to expand on a sustainable basis, adding diversity in supply and customer relationships as they grow. The clothing and textile industry is particularly complex regarding its inputs and outputs. Production is also complex when manufacturers handle spinning, weaving, cutting and finishing.…

ACCA members Danish Sange and Amina Rafi reveal how their marriage has accelerated their professional growth and advanced their careers.

It is tough to separate work and home when you are married to someone with a similar profession.

But setting these boundaries has helped Danish Sange, manager at PwC Middle East, and his wife Amina Rafi, audit senior at Deloitte Middle East, make the most of their relationship.…

The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) has released a white paper saying that the accounting profession needs to learn from the challenges of Covid-19, investing in boosting communication skills. This will enable accountants to be more effective pro-active trusted partners with their clients, able to adapt to flexible and remote working even after the pandemic subsides.…

THE EUROPEAN Commission is moving ahead with its plans to replace the European Union’s (EU) long-standing system of anti-money laundering directives – which give member states some flexibility over implementation – with a compulsory AML regulation. This will be directly applicable in all member states and must be followed to the letter.…

Covid-19 has ripped through the economy of the Indian Ocean country Mauritius, but it has helped island business advisory agency managing director Sheila Ujoodha make her case to clients that risk assessments and contingency planning are important.

The owner of SmarTree Consulting (SCL) since she created the company in 2018, Ujoodha is busy suggesting how businesses can cope with the pandemic, through its services of internal audit, risk assessment and regulatory consulting.…

EY, (formerly Ernst & Young), the Big 4 accounting major accused of shortcomings over its audit of disgraced German card payments processor Wirecard, is rejecting blame for its failure to detect the fintech firm’s EUR1.9 billion (USD2.1 billion) fraud scandal before it expanded to such a size.…

BRITAIN’S three Crown Dependencies, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey, are preparing to draft legislation to ensure their respective beneficial ownership registers are open to the public. But this access is not happening any time soon – with their governments saying they will not act before 2022.…

With China turning from capital inflow to outflow amid Chinese companies’ global expansion programs, Chinese financial institutions are facing closer anti-money laundering scrutiny, as they, too, expand globally. Indeed, China’s top five banks had 1, 270 overseas branches at the end of 2017 (according to FATF (the Financial Action Task Force).…

QUANTUM computers are now being developed that may offer accounting practices computing power to strengthen audits, but which also pose some serious cybersecurity concerns.

After decades of theorising, quantum computing is here. Google last October (2019) announced it had developed a device which it claimed took 200 seconds to sample data showing how a quantum computer works one million times (1), a task it claimed would take a standard digital super-computer 10,000 years.…

Big four accountancy firm, EY (formerly known as Ernst & Young) is to pay more than USD11 million in damages to a former partner that blew the whistle on the company’s collusion in covering up money laundering by a Dubai-based client Kaloti Jewellery International.…

WITH financial frauds growing in complexity and sophistication, it goes without saying that the importance of forensic accountants and auditors in spotting wrongdoing is increasing – so it is worrying when evidence suggests that the quality of audits maybe declining. Pressure on the audit profession in the UK, for instance, has intensified amid criticism for failing to spot financial problems at well-known companies, such as Carillion and Patisserie Valerie.…

ANTI-GRAFT group Transparency International (TI) has called on the UK government to comprehensively overhaul British anti-money laundering controls, arguing that the country risks becoming a jurisdiction notorious for weakness in fighting financial crime.

Noting Britain’s likely exit from the European Union (EU), TI warned its government must ensure its businesses meet “the highest possible” anti-crime standards.…

THE EUROPEAN dairy industry will be looking closely at the policies of the new European Commission that is now expected to assume office on December 1 – it is likely to increase pressure on the sector to improve its environmental performance.…

ACCOUNTANTS may be the designated non-financial professionals controlled by AML/CFT laws best placed to know if a client is laundering money, given their access to complete financial records. And while Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations do not lay down as comprehensive a duty on accountants as banks on lodging STRs (see https://www.fatf-gafi.org/media/fatf/documents/reports/RBA-Accounting-Profession.pdf…

ACCOUNTANTS may be the designated non-financial professionals controlled by AML/CFT laws best placed to know if a client is laundering money, given their access to complete financial records. And while Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations do not lay down as comprehensive a duty on accountants as banks on lodging STRs (see https://www.fatf-gafi.org/media/fatf/documents/reports/RBA-Accounting-Profession.pdf…

Gosego Motsamai, the new managing partner and country manager at KPMG Botswana, has blazed a trail by being the first woman to secure such a post in a Big Four firm within this dynamic emerging market country.

With 23 years’ experience, Motsamai still brims with passion for the profession and often works late into the evening to ensure deadlines are met, a tidy habit she has developed from her early days as an accountant.…

Digital disruption has been transforming banking services worldwide, and Africa, with its important m-commerce sector, has been in the frontline of this change – a fact not lost on established bank executives, such as Samuel Fredrick Mwogeza, the chief financial officer of Stanbic Bank Uganda Ltd.…

TRADE-based money laundering (TBML) continues to be a complex typology that is tough for law enforcement to detect and ML regulators to control.

The risk is that with Iran being subject to new USA sanctions, the use of TBML is going to grow in the short term, warn experts.…

With their large financial services industries and open economies, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland are conspicuously exposed to money laundering (ML) and terrorist financing (TF) risks.

Tough anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) policies are at the heart of their respective financial services regulations, yet both countries are regularly forced to fend off criticisms that they are not doing enough to tackle these problems.…

THE TOTAL value of frauds committed in the UK fell 64.7% to GBP746.3 million (USD994 million) in 2018, from a record GBP2.1 billion (USD2.8 billion) in 2017, accountancy advisory firm BDO LLP announced this week. But the company’s annual FraudTrack report*, released February 25, however, shows that despite this dramatic fall in value, the number of reported fraud cases in Britain only decreased 9% – from 577 to 525 – during this time.…

From climate change to digitalisation, there is no shortage of economic challenges facing the small island states of the Caribbean, but the region’s accounting sector has the capacity to manage upcoming change.

For many such financial professionals, being a part of ACCA – which this year will mark its 20^th in the region – is integral to progress.…

THE DYNAMIC east Asian powerhouses of Hong Kong and Singapore are both models for good practice in anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) – sharing both an efficient and open UK-inspired legal system and a need for a clean image internationally that helps maintain their status as hubs of global trade and finance.…

AUDITORS have not received a good press in the area of combating financial fraud. Financial disasters involving fraudulent practices include the notorious collapses of Lehman Brothers and the HBOS bank. A New York attorney concluded in 2007 that “EY substantially assisted Lehman Brothers… to engage in a massive accounting fraud”.…

From climate change to digitalisation, there is no shortage of economic challenges facing the small island states of the Caribbean, but the region’s accounting sector has the capacity to manage upcoming change.

For many such financial professionals, being a part of ACCA – which this year will mark its 20^th in the region – is integral to progress.…

AS DIGITALISATION takes over supply chains, disruptive technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence are revolutionising industries globally – and the knitwear industry is no exception. Indeed, the launch of the world’s first system tracking and tracing knitwear with blockchain technology, launched in May 2017, has stirred the industry’s interest, experts behind the project say.…

WITH reputational risk being an increasing concern for investors, the demand for information in accountancy reports that goes well beyond the balance sheet is growing. And, companies want to be sure that such data is of solid quality – making emerging forms of external reporting (EER) assurance the key focus of a high-level accounting meeting staged in Brussels on November 8.…

THE UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has opened a criminal investigation into fraudulent activity at bakery chain Valerie Patisserie by finance director Chris Marsh after a GBP20 million black hole was found in the accounts.  After discovering historical statements about company finances were “were mis-stated and subject to fraudulent activity and accounting irregularities,” Chairman of the Board, Luke Johnson, had to step in with loans from his own funds to stop the chain sinking.…

NEW European Union (EU) rules on whistleblower protection proposed by the European Commission will help the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing, EU experts have told Money Laundering Bulletin.

The proposals unveiled on April 23 for a directive ‘on the protection of persons reporting on breaches of Union law[*], “will strengthen the enforcement of the fourth anti-money laundering directive [4AMLD], complementing the directive’s existing rules [Article 61] on whistleblower protection, aligning them with the common high standards of protection,” a Commission official said.…

CONCERNS continue to grow about capacity in anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) systems, with managers being urged to take advantage of the AML profession’s openness to change.

A Dow Jones/ACAMS (Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists) global anti-money laundering survey focusing on retail and commercial banking, private banking/wealth management and investment banking, released April 2016, showed 60% of respondents cited increased regulatory expectations as the greatest AML compliance challenge (http://files.acams.org/pdfs/2016/Dow_Jones_and_ACAMS_Global_Anti-Money_Laundering_Survey_Results_2016.pdf…

FRAUD poses a “tremendous threat to organisations of all types and sizes, in all parts of the world”, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) – which like many expert groups have sought to demonstrate the scale of the problem with statistics.…

FRAUD poses a “tremendous threat to organisations of all types and sizes, in all parts of the world”, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) – which like many expert groups have sought to demonstrate the scale of the problem with statistics.…

As Ireland approaches full employment, (unemployment is currently just 6.3%), companies facing higher labour costs and competition for staff are improving their workplace environment to become more attractive as employers. They also hope that a new generation of high-spec office spaces – some being unveiled by accounting firms – will boost productivity.…

THE SINGAPORE government has released an accountancy roadmap, enabling the profession in the city state to grow 5.6% annually to generate Singapore dollars SGD2.03 billion (USD1.48 billion) in nominal value-added income, creating 2,000 new PMET (professionals, managers, executives and technicians) jobs by 2020.…

KEEPING accounting relevant through ongoing transformation is the driving force of Olivier Boutellis-Taft, chief executive of Accountancy Europe. “Change is my fuel,” says the industry organisation chief, speaking to Accounting & Business at his office in the heart of Brussels’ European Union (EU) quarter.…

INDIA’S new Goods and Services Tax (GST) – designed to overhaul, modernise and harmonise the country’s indirect taxation – has been the focus of bitter criticism, over its chaotic and haphazard introduction and implementation.

Since its formal launch last July (2017), “changes have been made continually, and hence businesses found it difficult to keep pace,” says Mahadevan Subra Mani, senior director, Deloitte India, in Mumbai.…

The prospect of significant hikes in taxes and administrative red tape on Irish exports and imports travelling through the UK to and from the rest of Europe once Britain leaves the European Union (EU), has prompted Irish exporters to seek more options for direct maritime trade.…

WILL Brexit increase money laundering through the UK, or will the British government’s October 2017 Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill (SAMLB) and the UK money laundering regulations 2017 adequately replace the European Union’s (EU) anti-money laundering directives (AMLD)?

British Labour member of the European Parliament (MEP) Claude Moraes has his doubts.…

*A newly approved European Union (EU) directive on transparency requirements for tax intermediaries will insist that accountants designing or promoting aggressive tax planning schemes report them to national tax authorities. The requirements, approved by the EU Council of Ministers, apply from July 1, 2020, and member states will have to fine intermediaries, including lawyers and bankers, that fail to report.…

RENÉ Descartes may have said ‘I think, therefore I am’, to judge if he was human. But when deciding whether a robot is an autonomous being, the real test may be whether it pays tax. As regulators, business leaders and philosophers ponder the impact of robots with artificial intelligence (AI) that choose actions, learn from their environment, and perform tasks better and faster than their flesh and blood developers, the question of their fiscal responsibility is becoming serious.…

RUNNING a complex international air travel business that recovering from 2017’s devastating hurricane season, Caribbean airline boss Julie Reifer-Jones is having to draw on her near three decades’ experience in senior financial management.

Immaculately presented, in killer heels, Reifer-Jones FCCA is not just the first female CEO of Antigua-based airline LIAT, she is the only female CEO of any airline in the Caribbean.…

THE MEMBER countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic Community (AEC) need to expand the remit of current skillsets identified in the grouping’s blueprint to ensure greater labour mobility during the fourth industrial revolution, according to a leading economist in the region.…

IT is a spectacular sight from the top of Dubai’s 68-storey Almas Tower, with the sea on one side and the massive development of Jumeirah Lake Towers (JLT) on the other. For Jignesh Sanghvi, chief financial officer of the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC), the panoramic views from the skyscraper are a constant reminder of the magnitude of development the government-sponsored free zone has witnessed over the years.…

DUBLIN-based accountancy firm BDO is planning to start a new EUR100 million investment fund to assist fast expanding mid-sized Irish companies in unlocking further growth opportunities. This will be the successor fund to an already existing BDO Development Capital Fund (DCF) worth EUR75 million.…

TRINIDADIAN accountant Anthony Pierre is clear that his major brief as the new president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of the Caribbean (ICAC) is to help build a cadre of “future-ready” professionals willing to cooperate across national borders within the region and be guided by international best practice.…

ANTI-FRAUD measures are expensive, and investment is growing from a low base yet surprisingly few companies keep tabs on the impact of fraud on their profit/loss margins.

Annual fraud losses are estimated to cost the UK more than GBP193 billion (USD240 billion), according to the 2016 Annual Fraud Indicator report prepared by the Centre for Counter Fraud Studies at southern England’s University of Portsmouth in partnership with data services group Experian and accountants PKF Littlejohn.…

WITHOUT European Union (EU) supervision, the fight against fraud, in the UK at least, will become more difficult after ‘Brexit’, European fraud experts claim.

“London is already known to be a major money laundering centre, so that can only get worse once the EU ‘strings’ have been severed,” predicted Hugh Penri-Williams, fraud consultant and vice president of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) France.…

Any professional involving in combatting fraud has an array of reports, statistics and research to choose from to help with their work. But what is useful intelligence and what is marketing froth? Fraud Intelligence has reviewed the output of publicly available fraud reports and asked some leading fraud professionals about how they use these reports.…

Machines are taking on more and more tasks traditionally carried out by accountants, Professor Richard Susskind OBE and his son Dr Daniel Susskind, an economics lecturer at the University of Oxford, UK, have warned. They were speaking at a ‘Digital Day’ conference in Brussels, staged on March 29, in a ‘What future for the professions?’…

THE DE-RISKING by major banks through cancelling correspondent banking relationships (CBRs) has started to raise such alarm that anti-money laundering institutions are starting to advise against such caution.

“There has been international pressure to make banks think twice about turning down customers and not just have blanket bans  on certain jurisdictions  or certain types of institutions,” said Sarah Ouarbya,  partner in Mazars, one of the UK’s largest accountancy firms and an international  specialist in audit, tax and advisory services.…

SOUTH African auditor-general Thembekile Kimi Makwetu has half of his seven-term left in which to solidify his preferred legacy – restoring the reputation of his country’s public sector institutions as trusted bodies that accept responsibilities and whose leaders understand and fulfill their duties.…

The Egyptian uprising of January 2011, has – regrettably – put the country’s accountancy sector on the back-foot, says Hazem Hassan, chairman of the Egyptian Society of Accountants and Auditors (ESAA), part of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC), and chairman of KPMG in Egypt.…

WITH President Donald Trump having consigned the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal to the dustbin of history, focus is now switching to his intentions over the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP) that has been under negotiation since 2013.

If completed, this could be one of the biggest trade deals ever signed – uniting the economies of the USA and the European Union (EU), which will still be huge, even if Britain makes good on its 2016 referendum result to quit the bloc.…

A long-held ambition by Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB) to create an aerotropolis, or airport city, anchored around Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) is taking key steps forward with a newly finalised master plan and a number of strategic partnerships.

The project, called KLIA Aeropolis, was announced in May (2016).…

Central Bank theft – casino repercussions: the Philippines

The theft in February of $101m from the Bangladesh Bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank New York in an audacious hack of SWIFT codes saw funds flow to casino accounts at Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation in the Philippines.…

COMPANIES and the financial professionals that work with them have many risks to worry about, but few can seem as menacing and as alien as the so-called ‘dark web’.

The Internet can be described as an iceberg: the websites and services most people use regularly are the tip, but there is an entire other, much larger world submerged below.…

WITH the Paris Agreement on fighting climate change having come into force on November 4, financial and environmental reporters will start to prepare in earnest for the monitoring and reports that will follow its implementation. Of course, ironically, four days later – on November 8 – Donald Trump was elected as President of the United States, having campaigned against the agreement.…

To keep pace with today’s global and interconnected world, auditors must move with the times, European experts told a high-level Brussels conference on November 16.  Maggie McGhee, director of professional insights at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) – joint hosts of the ‘Future of Audit’ conference with assurance, tax and advisory services network Grant Thornton International, said: “Auditors need to adapt and constantly innovate.…

Global accountancy giant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has reached an undisclosed settlement with trustees of bankrupt US mortgage company Taylor, Bean & Whitaker (TBW) for failing to detect fraud during seven years of audits.  Although the settlement is confidential, it will be high as TBW trustees originally sued PwC for USD5.6 billion in 2013.…

A WORK-study programme launched in Singapore last year (2015) is picking up pace with the scheme now covering 21 sectors, from an initial seven. Singapore’s Earn and Learn Programme (ELP) is one of various schemes launched as part of SkillsFuture, a national initiative aimed at fostering a culture of lifelong learning and skills mastery within the city state.…

The Philippines has been standing accused of passively aiding money launderers and terrorist financers ever since its Anti-Money Laundering Act in 2001 exempted local casinos from the duty of submitting suspicious transaction reports on their operations.. But pressures to revise that decision have been growing markedly since earlier this year Chinese cyber hackers managed to launder USD81 million through banks and casinos in Manila, with only approximately USD6 million of the booty recovered so far.…

AFRICA’S economic growth means it does not just have more banks than before, banking groups are spreading across national borders. And while this can boost banks’ lending and savings security, it also complicates the job of regulators charged with ensuring such institutions are honest and solvent.…

LAWRENCE Agbor Abunaw had set his sights on the banking sector as an economics undergraduate student at the UK’s University of Leicester more than two decades ago. But a career orientation fair and meeting a headhunter changed the Cameroonian’s goals and led to joining the accountancy profession in May 1993 with PwC France, before returning to his country of birth Cameroon for eight years.…

A senior tax expert has advised accountants to carefully monitor for their clients likely changes in taxation promoting sustainability as international concern grows over inequality. The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants’ (ACCA) head of taxation Chas Roy-Chowdhury’s comments come as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD) released a new report advising taxation policy makers worldwide on how to promote sustainable growth by sensitively designing tax systems.…

With new UK Prime Minister Theresa May apparently determined to fulfill the wishes of the 52%/48% Brexit referendum result backing Britain leaving the European Union (EU), what EU accounting and taxation laws will ultimately remain on the British statute? The PM has made it clear she recognises that a key force behind the ‘leave’ vote was a dislike of unrestricted EU immigration into Britain, and should she satisfy that demand, the prospect of the UK becoming a non-EU member of the European Economic Area (EEA) will become most unlikely.…

Small accounting firms could be driven out of Europe’s auditing market by new European Union (EU) audit rules that came into force on June 17 experts warned a joint European Confederation of Directors Associations (ecoDa) – PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) conference. Entitled ‘Audit committees at the heart of the Audit Reform’, the Brussels meeting examined the impact of EU directive 2014/56/EU on statutory audits – the law is designed to prevent conflicts of interest between auditors and their clients.…

THE BUSINESS model of the fashion industry has long been that of low prices, low manufacturing wages, quick production, and just as quick obsolescence. In that respect, it seems as far removed as any industry from sustainability.

Yet, increasingly, ethical brands are emerging.…

MYANMAR, the world’s newest democracy, is taking steps to improve its financial reporting. Its reforms are new – as befits a country that saw its first and only stock exchange – the Myanmar Securities Exchange Centre (MSEC) – open on March 25.…

THE DIRECTOR general of the European Union (EU) anti-fraud office OLAF has stressed that his agency needs closer ties with accountants. In an interview with Accounting & Business a day before the agency released its latest annual report (on May 31), Giovanni Kessler stressed that accountants working inside and outside institutions were ideally qualified to help sniff out fraud.…

It gets exceedingly hot in Riyadh in the summer, with the mercury rarely below 40 degrees Celsius, but that does not deter Moazam Shah from going for his evening run around the residential compound he lives in with his family.

After six years in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Pakistani national Shah has acclimatised to exercising in extreme heat: “It’s a time for myself, to catch up on my thoughts,” he told Accounting & Business at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Manama, Bahrain.…

Fraud investigation has come a long way since the days when police launched dawn raids on suspect premises, driving criminals to flush away paper evidence down the toilet. We have technology to thank for that.

Advances in information handling have radically changed the ways in which big companies guard their financial records and the methods used by fraudsters to overcome them.  …

Fraud investigation has come a long way since the days when police launched dawn raids on suspect premises, driving criminals to flush away paper evidence down the toilet. We have technology to thank for that.

Advances in information handling have radically changed the ways in which big companies guard their financial records and the methods used by fraudsters to overcome them.  …

ACCOUNTANTS are starting to tangle with the knotty question of whether to support Britain remaining in or quitting the European Union (EU) after the scheduled in-out referendum on June 23. While many UK captains of industry and business have publicly called for Britain to stay in, citing the advantages of freely accessing the EU’s 503 million person market and its trained labour pool, the question for accountants is not that simple.…

CAPITAL markets and their traders within Malaysia may be forced to forge defences against cyber-crime amidst growing concern that hackers could damage the country’s financial services. The Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) is seeking comments from accountants and other financial specialists about planned regulations saying capital market participants should have cyber-security programmes and policies, including contingency plans for dealing with associated risks.…

CAPITAL markets and their traders within Malaysia may be forced to forge defences against cyber-crime amidst growing concern that hackers could damage the country’s financial services. The Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) is seeking comments from accountants and other financial specialists about planned regulations saying capital market participants should have cyber-security programmes and policies, including contingency plans for dealing with associated risks.…

Politicians in the Philippines fear that the country will be censured by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) after USD81 million stolen from the Bangladesh Bank central bank in February entered the international financial system through Manila casinos. In its most recent evaluation on the Philippines made in 2013, the FATF determined that the country had made significant progress in improving its AML/CFT (anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism) but raised concerns regarding the absence of AML/CFT controls for the casino sector.…

Financial experts struck off for misconduct from professional bodies, such as the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), should be actively barred from working as accountants, a Brussels conference on ‘Fighting Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing: The Role of Accountants and Finance Professionals’ has heard.…

THE NEED for sub-Saharan Africa to improve its corporate governance, promoting sustainable development in a region that still trails the rest of the world in many poverty metrics, has been a key theme of accounting conferences. And new initiatives reflecting this understanding have been making progress in east and west Africa, for instance.…

Further regulation is not always the way to restore trust in business – rather it can be achieved by greater emphasis on improving corporate culture, a May 5 conference at the European Parliament, in Brussels, heard. This did not mean that regulation should be scrapped or ignored, but speakers at the joint ACCA – European Confederation of Directors’ Associations (ecoDa) conference ‘Creating value through governance: channelling corporate culture and ethics in boards’ wanted to see legislation set incentives – carrots rather than sticks.…

IN a fast-growing emerging economy such as Bangladesh, companies and consumers alike can sometimes play fast-and-loose with the truth to hide financial wrongdoing and commit frauds, but they will have to reckon with Bangladesh’s Comptroller and Auditor General Masud Ahmed and his staff.…

While many economies in Africa are growing fast, there is a consensus amongst accountants that the continent has to build its business reporting and administration to make sure this growth is sustainable. Indeed, the third African Congress of Accountants (ACOA), staged in Port Louis, Mauritius, from May 11 to 14, heard that this essential work is needed now, even as some countries remain marred by severe socio-political unrest, economic instability, poverty, famine and disease.…

Best-selling Australian author and accounting historian Jane Gleeson-White sees accountants as potential revolutionaries with the power to save the planet. Now, there’s a thought.
They need to be creative, however. And while such tactics are generally associated with the mafia and corporate crooks, laundering the proceeds of drug cartels or squirrelling profits away from the view of the taxman, Gleeson-White, 54, challenges this perception.…

Bangladesh’s top auditor understands only too well the key role strong auditing can play in an emerging economy such as his own country – for good or ill. Indeed, he does not mince his words when he recalls the role auditors played in Bangladesh’s 2011 capital market collapse that ruined millions of small investors.…

Malaysia’s finance ministry has released a comprehensive plan to boost the strength of the accountancy profession in the country. Drafted by a special committee to strengthen the accountancy profession (CSAP), the policy is designed to ensure Malaysia has sufficient numbers of professional accountants and reform the profession’s governance.…

While Cambodia’s GDP growth over the past two decades has been tremendous, averaging 7.6% per year since 1995, Cambodia remains a developing market and its accounting industry is still very much a work in progress. One person deeply involved with helping push its accounting world forward in Cambodia is 40-year-old Kimleng Khoy.…

Nobody has yet made a wholly compelling claim that for all the resources being devoted to fighting money laundering, regulators, law enforcers and businesses are winning the battle against it. Indeed, there is no consensus that the anti-money laundering (AML) establishment is even approaching the challenge in the right way by relying so heavily on the private sector.…

Companies are being offered an increasing amount of advice, guidance and tools to fight the demand for and payment of small bribes such as cash and vouchers, benefits in kind such as tickets to sporting events, pre-paid phone cards, alcohol, tobacco and perfume.…

The Bangladesh cabinet on Monday (Nov 10) finally proposed a long awaited law to regulate Bangladesh’s audit profession, which had been stalled amidst disagreements between auditors and management accountants

A draft Financial Reporting Act will now be presented for a vote by the country’s parliament, the Jatiyo Sangshad, although the government has yet to release full details.…

As anti-money laundering (AML) regulations become more complex and demanding, compliance technology and software providers are updating their solutions to screen more data, more efficiently, and present the results in a comprehensible way. Companies have been honing products to help clients switch to their software, dealing with problems such as incorporating old data from a legacy system; moving such data efficiently and accurately; and minimising errors by staff unused to the system.…

While Africa can be a tough place to work, it offers key opportunities for skilled financial professionals who can develop an understanding of how African business operates. Susanne Swaniker-Tettey, chief financial officer at Okavango Diamond Company Pty Ltd, is one such specialist.…

As farms and agricultural organisations face changing accounting demands from legislatures and financial institutions around the world, accountants face greater pressures to develop specialised agricultural knowledge.

Indeed, accounting services provided to the farming industry within the European Union (EU) are becoming increasingly important, notably because of reforms to the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), experts have told Accounting & Business.…

With less than one-and-a-half years until the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) creates its own European Union (EU)-style single market, the bloc is about to sign off on a ‘mutual recognition arrangement’ (MRA) on accountancy services. This is designed to help the mobility of accounting professionals wanting to work across the 10 member states, and all their governments bar the Philippines (expected to sign in October) have now signed up.…

THE EUROPEAN Commission has amended European Union (EU) rules on establishing a network for collecting accountancy data on farm incomes and businesses, used to assess grants and subsidies. The changes include new rules for selecting statistically representative holdings; fixing reference periods and methods for classifying farms; and how to collect and group accountancy data.…

THE HONG Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants (HKICPA) has welcomed the launch by the Hong Kong government of proposals to reform the special administrative region’s regulatory regime for auditors of listed companies and other organisations.

There will be three months of consultation (ending September 20) on the proposals whose goal is enhancing the independence of Hong Kong’s audit regulators.…

ACCOUNTING firms auditing overseas-listed Chinese companies are keeping a close eye on a draft regulation released by China’s finance ministry on April 29 which would restrict the roles that foreign auditors can play in this work.

This ‘Accounting Firms Cross-border Auditing Service Temporary Regulation’ would prevent accounting firms registered outside mainland China from carrying out au­dits alone for Chinese overseas-listed enterprises, in­cluding overseas listed enterprises with operat­ions in China.…

There are fewer than 1,000 certified accountants in Afghanistan, of which less than 200 are Afghanistan in a country of 29.82 million says the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF), and there are no national accounting regulations. More than 30 years of conflict has left the country’s economy in shambles, and with foreign troops being withdrawn by 2016, developing the accountancy sector and its domestic regulations is a priority to underpin sustainable growth.…

WHEN the Trinidad & Tobago government in 2003 decided to close down much of the Caribbean country’s 300-year old sugar cane industry, it was described by detractors as one of the most politically ambitious moves in the history of the twin-island republic.…

These are testing times for everyone in Ukraine: a revolution followed by the annexation of Crimea by Russia; pro-Russian separatists stoking unrest and grabbing government buildings in eastern Ukraine; and worries of a full-scale invasion. Just as pertinently, these hugely destabilising political upheavals have merely added to the existing turmoil of a state plagued for decades by corruption and low living standards.…

These are testing times for everyone in Ukraine: a revolution followed by the annexation of Crimea by Russia; pro-Russian separatists stoking unrest and grabbing government buildings in eastern Ukraine; and worries of a full-scale invasion. Just as pertinently, these hugely destabilising political upheavals have merely added to the existing turmoil of a state plagued for decades by corruption and low living standards.…

The European Union (EU) has ended nearly four years of speculation and uncertainty for auditors by agreeing a package of audit reforms that reflects major signs of compromise but which nevertheless will bring about big changes in the profession. The clear hope is that the changes will lead to a more competitive and effective audit profession, thereby helping prevent a repeat of the financial crisis of the last few years.…

THE SINGAPORE Parliament has beefed up the powers of the country’s accounting regulator, especially over corporate service providers. MPs passed an accounting and corporate regulatory authority (amendment) bill, which will insist corporate service providers be registered as filing agents, able to help companies with their establishment, legal advice, regulatory filings, office hosting and secretarial services.…

EUROPEAN accountants are looking to the negotiations for a free trade agreement between the USA and the European Union (EU) with the hope that it will make it easier for them to switch shores of the Atlantic to practice their profession.…

RECENT scandals involving the mis-selling of financial products, the rigging of the LIBOR interest rate for interbank lending, insider fraud, and bribery and corruption throughout and beyond companies’ supply chains are costing organisations dearly both financially, reputationally and legally.

In the US, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) lies in wait for wrongdoers; in the UK it is the 2010 Bribery Act.…

BY MARK ATKINSON, in Dubai

FEMALE financial specialists are leading the charge in the Gulf region for women to gain senior professional positions in countries where men have traditionally dominated career structures.

How finance can be a catalyst for this process and the challenges facing women attaining top management positions within the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in particular, was the focus of discussions at an ACCA roundtable staged on January 21 in Dubai.…

FEMALE financial specialists are leading the charge in the Gulf region for women to gain senior professional positions in countries where men have traditionally dominated career structures.

How finance can be a catalyst for this process and the challenges facing women attaining top management positions within the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in particular, was the focus of discussions at an ACCA roundtable staged on January 21 in Dubai.…

THE EUROPEAN Commission is to review its procedures for ensuring nuclear materials in European Union (EU) member states are not diverted from peaceful to military uses. It has released a tender for an expert to check its systems, which are coordinated by its directorate general for energy directorate E, based in Luxembourg.…

Ahmad Darwish, chairman of the ACCA UAE (United Arab Emirates) members’ advisory committee (UAE MAC) and manager of the management accounting team at DP World UAE region.

“The UAE is becoming a more developed economy like the USA and Europe.…

THE HIGHLY diverse and emerging markets of the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia (MENASA) face major challenges in bringing financial services, accounting and auditing up to international standards. They are often lacking qualified professionals and sometimes overly reliant on expatriate expertise.…

ZHU Jiandi and Gu Wenxian could be the two most travelled accountants in China. The frequent flying duo – chairman and managing director, respectively, at BDO China Shu Lun Pan – were in the southwesterly megalopolis of Chongqing recently to rally local staff to a company goal of making the office a bridgehead for expansion throughout the southwest and west of China.…

THE EUROPEAN Commission is to review its procedures for ensuring nuclear materials in European Union (EU) member states are not diverted from peaceful to military uses. It has released a tender for an expert to check its systems, which are coordinated by its directorate general for energy directorate E, based in Luxembourg.…

BARELY a year in office, China’s new government under President Xi Jinping has made more moves towards economic reform than the previous administration in its 10 years in power. Mr Xi has promised to reboot China’s economy by paring back regulations as well as the preferences enjoyed by the state-owned sector, which monopolises many industries, including finance.…

And this can make Singaporean accountants lives particularly difficult, especially in a country not known for robust transparency.

Lee said economic uncertainty creates “significant challenges” for firms regarding their ability and willingness to disclose information about “future-oriented assumptions” and undermines the reliability of commercial projections made in annual results.…

WHEN a senior company figure blunders in communicating through the media, the corporate and career costs can be high, but getting it right can drive sales and profits.

Examples in the debit column are rife. Gene Morphis, the CFO of Nasdaq-listed US womenswear chain Francesca’s Holding Corp was fired in May 2102 after his ‘Tweet’ message on social media site Twitter inadvertently disclosed share price-sensitive information from a board meeting in contravention of rules applied by the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC).…

IN signing up to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development’s (OECD) multilateral agreement on tax information transparency, Singapore has moved to address a major paradox that applies to its banking, business and financial operations.

Singapore scores exceptionally highly in global anti-corruption indexes – in 2012 it was ranked fifth by Transparency International out of 176 nations, behind only Denmark, Finland, New Zealand and Finland, for its lack of perceived corruption.…

If financial professionals ever doubted the utility of a fully functioning state for business, Somalia has since 1991 shown how its absence can undermine personal and commercial liberty.

And the lesson is underlined by the fate of Somaliland, a breakaway east African territory that declared independence from Somalia in 1991, based on land that was a British protectorate before 1960.…

PORTUGAL’S Faro Algarve Airport may not be the first airport that leaps to mind when considering where to test-run the latest in air travel security equipment, but the airport is trialling a cutting-edge airport security system.

Located in the country’s southern Algarve region, it is a small airport with seasonal peaks and troughs of traffic that processed 5,672,377 passengers last year (2012) – the majority of whom arrived on budget carriers between June and September.…

Although proper accounting is important for developing and emerging economies – for instance, informational transparency decreases transactional costs – obstacles remain, said Evgeny Buben, Gazprom Nigeria’s CFO: “There’s a lack of political will to start the process of harmonisation and control implementation; a lack of  professionals capable of performing proper implementation; resistance from local accounting bodies and other local influential groups; resistance of local accountants and auditors to changes.”…

QATAR is a country in a hurry. Under its 22 year plan, the Qatar National Vision 2030, the country is planning to diversify away from its reliance on hydrocarbons to become a knowledge-based, sustainable economy. Some USD93 billion is being spent on education, health care and infrastructure projects to morph this former Gulf desert backwater into a cutting edge, 21st century state.…

THE RUSSIA tax manager at energy giant Shell has called for comprehensive financial and business practice reforms in his country, so that companies can reduce costs and operate in a more predictable environment. Speaking to Accountancy Futures, Andrey Sukhov said: “We need to improve the whole investment climate.”…

AT a time when the world seems increasingly led by lifelong politicians, it is perhaps refreshing to hear from a political leader who has a solid background in business, and such is former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin.

Speaking to Accountancy Futures, he showed how more than half-a-century of business and public life can be brought to bear in financial and commercial mentorship.…

EXPERTS representing accounting bodies from around the world urged accountants in Africa to help reduce corruption and mismanagement in their governments through effective bookkeeping and auditing, as the continent moves towards sustainable growth. The 2^nd Africa Congress of Accountants (ACOA) gathered in Accra, the capital of Ghana, from May 14-16.…

THE PHILIPPINES, which with 95 million people, has the 12th biggest population in the world, is among the world’s most promising emerging markets, and international business and accounting services are taking note. GDP was up by around 7% in 2012, with 6% growth forecast for 2013, and the country’s accounting sector is capitalising on its strong economic growth.…

SUCCESSION issues are a significant and growing challenge for companies and could be an opportunity for qualified accountants who may step up internally or be drafted in to even become the next CEO or CFO.

“Many businesses spend very little time, if any, thinking through who will lead the various aspects of their business in the future,” said Karen Young, a director for the senior finance section of global recruitment experts Hays, and whose remit includes qualified accountancy jobs including finance director, financial controller, management accountant, financial accountant, or practice accounting.…

IT seems for all the world like the setting for a Graham Greene novel: a British-trained chartered accountant in charge of an almost unfathomably wealthy state-owned holding corporation in a distant outpost.

Yet Greene would barely recognise the 21st century context in which Our Man in Kazakhstan operates.…

IS the suitcase or manila envelope full of cash still a favoured means of exchange between briber and bribed, or has bribery become so sophisticated that such basic methods are now foresworn? It would appear so – at least, third parties are now readily employed to obscure a bribe trail.…

Strengths:

China has a booming e-commerce sector, and growing online drinks retailers are building more warehouses nationwide. They need to balance ‘just-in-case’ and ‘just-in-time’ demands and also the need for flexibility versus low inventory. Negotiating these logistical pressures is vital in this huge yet highly fragmented market.…

INDIA’s auditors have had a difficult time in the court of public opinion since the revelations of the USD1 billion Satyam Computer Services scandal. A new Companies Bill might change that – although it will also inflict some pain on India’s auditors.…

CHINESE auditors connected to big accountancy firms are facing a potential ban on them practicing before the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC). This might happen if a judge confirms they willfuly withheld details of audits or interim reviews of nine unidentified Chinese firms whose principal operations are in China but whose shares are traded in the US and who are the subject of ongoing SEC fraud investigations.…

THE WEALTHY city state of Singapore seems to have glided through the global financial crisis, but the country only narrowly avoided recession and this slowdown has affected its important accounting sector. GDP growth in Singapore grew in 2012 was projected to be 1.2%, down from 4.9% the previous year.…

BY CONNLA STOKES, IN HO CHI MINH CITY

As one of the world’s fastest-growing accountancy bodies, ACCA is attracting more finance and management professionals in Asia eager to get to the top. This is certainly the case for Shanghai, China-born Katherine Wu.…

BY TENZING LAMSANG in BHUTAN

JIGMI RINZIN: CV

? Currently: Secretary General, ARAPAC (from Dec 2010); MP (from Apr 2008), National Council of Bhutan NCB); Public Accounts Committee, Parliament of Bhutan – member (from Apr 2009) and chairman (Jul 2010 – Jun 2011); Member of Economics Affairs Committee and Chairman, Parliamentary Entitlements Committee, NCB (from Jul 2008).…

BY TENZING LAMSANG IN THIMPHU

BHUTAN is a small Himalayan nation striving to strengthen its financial infrastructure and transparency while pursuing happiness as an economic policy goal for some 710,000 inhabitants living in a parliamentary constitutional monarchy.

For a perspective on progress, Accountancy Futures talked to Jigmi Rinzin, a hugely influential Bhutanese and Asia accountancy voice as: a member of the Bhutanese parliament serving on several economic committees including the Public Accounts Committee (PAC); former chief auditor at Bhutan’s Royal Audit Authority (RAA); and secretary general of the Asia Regional Association of Public Accounts Committees (ARAPAC).…

BY TENZING LAMSANG in BHUTAN

Tenzing Lamsang reports from Bhutan on an ACCA Fellow’s roles in fostering good audit and accounting practice there and throughout Asia.

HE displays a tough streak in combatting fraud, corruption and governmental waste, but also a mellower side in his public service ethic and support for his country’s pursuit of happiness.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A WORLD Bank report has hailed as a success a project to improve the capacity of west African accounting organisations underpinning the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU). An initiative of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the monetary union commission had charged regional accounting organisations with regulating west African accounting and auditing practices and standards: the Permanent Council of the Chartered Accountants Profession (CPPC); a commission running CPA training (the CREFECF); and the West African Accountancy Council (CCOA).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

TALKS are being prepared at the European Union (EU) involving MEPs, EU ministers and European Commission officials over improving the collection of accountancy data on farm incomes and business operations. The Working Party on Financial Agricultural Questions (AGRIFIN) is coordinating this work, which could reform the EU’s regulation No 1217/2009 setting up a network collecting this information.…

BY POORNA RODRIGO

HAVING being groomed by his country’s auditor general’s office as a trainee accountant over a decade ago, Niyaz Ibrahim says he feel proud to head this institution today as the Maldives auditor general.

Ibrahim assumed the top post in May 2011.…

BY POORNA RODRIGO

Niyaz Ibrahim

* May 2011 to present – Auditor General of the Maldives

*May 2010 to present – member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA)

*August 2010 to present – Lecturer Villa College, the Maldives

*March 2010 to May 2011 – Chief Internal Auditor – Maldives Ports Limited

*November 2008 to January 2009 and June 2009 to February 2010 – Deputy Director General of Audit – Maldives Auditor General’s Office (AGO)

*September 2008 to Nov 2008 – Assistant Director General of Audit – AGO

*July 2004 to Sept 2007 – Assistant Auditor – Audit Office

*October 2000 to Sept 2002 – Accounts Officer Trainee – Audit Office

*July 2004 to Sep 2007 – Manager – Gothic Construction Private Limited

*July 2004 to present – Private practising (Auditing, accountancy, financial and management services)

*January 2009 to June 2009 – ACCA Professional Examinations: (FTC Kaplan, Singapore)

*September 2007 to September 2008 – MSc.…

THE GOAL of making sustainability reporting a norm for companies worldwide was boosted by an agreement forged at the United Nations Sustainable Development Conference (Rio+20) in June, but ultimately, national governments will still be responsible for this key policy area.

The investor-led Corporate Sustainability Reporting Coalition (CSRC) led the charge for a deal at the Rio de Janeiro meeting that included solid international commitments on expanding sustainability reporting, and some green activists will doubtless have been disappointed by the result.…

BY MARK ROWE

WITH its location adjacent to Europe’s key fashion centre Italy, a highly skilled labour force and low wages, Albania’s textile industry is repositioning itself amid the unrelenting economic crisis that is gripping Europe. A well-educated workforce and widely spoken Italian, English and Greek add to the appeal, according to Diana Cekhodima Sokolaj, president of the Albanian Fashion Designers Association.…

BY MARK ROWE

THE ARAB world maybe liberalizing, amidst sometime violent struggle, but the world still awaits a Central Asia spring. Five former Soviet states straddle this region – Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan – and all, to varying degrees, are struggling to develop internationally-recognised financial reporting standards, business ethics and commercial regulation.…

BY GEORGE STONE, IN CAPE TOWN

It is part of the accountancy profession’s faith that good honest financial reporting and dealings can promote economic growth because of the commercial trust that it engenders. And maybe nowhere can the case be made more strongly than in Africa.…

BY VILLEN ANGANAN, IN BEAU-BASSIN, MAURITIUS

INTERNATIONAL accounting firms are exploring opportunities within Africa, and are using the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius – a regional financial centre – as a stepping stone. All the Big Four: Ernst &Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), KPMG and Deloitte are already successfully offering their services to African clients.…

BY VILLEN ANGANAN, IN PORT LOUIS, MAURITIUS

ACCA fellows can be found in many influential positions worldwide. And in Africa, they are often the backbone of financial and management best practice. That is certainly the case on the Indian Ocean state of Mauritius, where environment and sustainable development minister and ACCA member Devanand Virahsawmy, 62, belongs to the inner circle of prime minister Navin Ramgoolam, who secured a second mandate in May 2010 elections.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA, IN NEW DELHI

REAL estate, finance, bullion, jewellery, equity trading and mining sectors in India are prone to generation of black or unaccounted money, which is moved around the world, said a May 21 official finance ministry report ‘White Paper on Black Money’.…

BY CARMEN PAUN, IN BRUSSELS, AND ROB STOKES

CRITICS of European Commission proposals for sweeping changes to audit practice and market regulation probably have a year or so to influence the final outcome.

This emerged in The CA’s interview with Jonathan Faull, the Commission’s director general for internal markets & services, about the so-called ‘Barnier proposals’ put forward by the European Union’s (EU) internal market Commissioner Michel Barnier.…

BY EDWARD WILSON, IN CANCUN

*There are around 5 million businesses in Mexico, with 133 firms listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange

*Medium-sized companies account for 52% of Mexico’s GDP

*Audit is a business requirement in Mexico for medium-sized and larger companies

*The Instituto Mexicano de Contadores Públicos (IMCP) has around 20,000 public accounting partners operating across Mexico.…

BY EDWARD WILSON, IN CANCUN

MEXICO is in many ways at a crossroads. With its proximity to the US, an increasingly broad range of industrial and services sectors, a relatively cheap labour force, and numerous preferential trade deals, particularly the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it is brimming with economic potential.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE, IN BEIRUT

THE DEVELOPMENT of commercial legislation in Turkey has not kept pace with the country’s blistering economic growth over the past decade. While structural economic reforms have been carried out, a foreign investment law passed, and GDP levels have more than tripled since 2002, Turkey has been slipping down the ranks in the World Bank’s ‘Ease of Doing Business’ report, dropping five places in 2011.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA, IN NEW DELHI

INDIAN auditors are bracing themselves for the introduction of harsh penalties in a new Companies Bill which reaches its next stage of debate in the Indian parliament in March.

Auditors found guilty of fraud or intent to defraud could face up to 10 years in jail and fines of up to three times any defrauded sums under legislation proposed partly in response to the USD1 billion Satyam Computer Services (SCS) fraud.…

BY DAVID HAYHURST, IN PARIS

When talking to Accounting & Business in her Paris office, Michèle Cartier Le Guérinel often struggles to make herself heard over the noise of the renovations shaking the walls on either side of her. Several floors of her international accountancy organisation FIDEF’s headquarters, in an anachronistically new and large building on an otherwise quiet street in the most elegant seventh arrondissement (a stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower), are undergoing a thorough makeover.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA, IN NEW DELHI

A RAFT of legislative and administrative changes drafted and introduced last year have been designed to make India to conform with Financial Action Task Force (FATF) guidelines, answering a critical 2010 assessment.

"India is largely compliant with the FATF recommendations, both by the way of technical compliance and effectiveness of implementation," said a senior Indian government official who deals closely with money laundering issues.…

BY MJ DESCHAMPS

THE GREEN picturesque land of New Zealand has recently gained some new human scenery: new stadiums and roadways, and an estimated 95,000 additional flag waving visitors: the 2011 Rugby World Cup (RWC) is now underway. By the first kick-off between New Zealand’s All Blacks and Tonga on September 9, at a revamped Eden Park stadium in Auckland, the country’s central and local governments had already spent approximately New Zealand dollars NZD500 million (USD411 million) on the event.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA, IN NEW DELHI

THE INCREASING popularity of corporate whistleblower services in India is prompting foreign accounting and advisory firms to introduce international best practices in the country for employees wanting to raise the alarm over corruption, fraud and financial malpractice.…

BY SERAJ ELALEM and BRIAN CONLEY

AS REBEL forces take over Tripoli, a Libyan PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) accountant has told how he fled Tripoli to return home to Benghazi early this February, because he knew a rebellion was coming and he wanted to be with his family when it broke out.…

BY JUSTIN STARES

ACCOUNTANTS could help the European Union’s (EU) anti-fraud watchdog track down embezzlers, according to the newly appointed chief. In an interview at his Brussels office Giovanni Kessler, director general of European anti-fraud office OLAF, believes there is room for greater involvement of the private sector in both uncovering fraudsters and reporting fraud.…

BY MARK GODFREY

WITH the fast-growing Chinese economy looking increasingly to overseas expansion and foreign mergers and acquisitions, it is not surprising so-called second tier accountancy alliances such as BDO and Crowe Horwath are keen for a piece of the action in China.…

BY ALAN OSBORN, KEITH NUTHALL and RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

THE INTRODUCTION of new global accounting standards through the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) which began some five years ago and will take 10 or more years to achieve is a massive undertaking which will revolutionise corporate bookkeeping and lead to an international standard matrix of values allowing for much greater transparency and facilitating country-by-country financial comparisons.…

BY NEIL CALLANAN

THE CHOICE of The Shelbourne Hotel on Dublin’s St Stephen’s Green for Ireland’s first major post-recession property auction could not have been better. The grand dame of Irish hotels in many ways serves as a microcosm of the boom and the bust of the Irish property market over the last decade.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

INDIA’S Satyam Computer Services, the company found involved in a US dollars USD1 billion dollar fraud in January 2009, is fighting a USD138 million tax claim on fictitious income shown in its accounts between 2002 and 2008.

Now known as Mahindra Satyam, since being sold to Tech Mahindra in a government auction in April 2009, it has petitioned India’s Supreme Court to fight a High Court order backing the country’s tax authorities.…

BY MARK GODFREY

CHINA may soon add its own voice to a global accounting scene dominated by the big four, Chen Yugui, head of the Chinese Institute of Certified Public Accountants (CICPA) has told Accountancy Age. In an exclusive interview in Beijing, he explained: "Internationally and nationally we don’t think it’s a good phenomenon that the big four take a dominant position, as it will harm the sustainability of the profession."…

BY JOHN K AGUNDA

IF there was one African country where a business forum on ethics was most appropriate, it might well be Tanzania, given its immediate post-independence history of socialism and self-reliance.

Those purist 1960s and 1970s days of former President Julius Nyerere and his ‘ujamaa’ leftism are now history, of course, with Tanzania, very much part of the gloablised liberal capitalist mainstream.…

BY TRICIA OBEN

THE DIFFICULTY of luring the cream of ‘Generation Y’ into the accounting profession worldwide is a widely recognised problem, but in countries where opportunities can be sparse such as west Africa’s Cameroon, this can be very tough. The issue was discussed at an ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) employer forum on March 22 in the economic capital Douala.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

INDIA looks likely to miss its self-imposed deadline of April 1 to implement international financial reporting standards (IFRS), with government officials admitting at an open forum in New Delhi that the timetable could be too tight.

Just six weeks ahead of the deadline, the Indian parliament has yet to amend the Companies Act or authorise secondary legislation authorising IFRS.…

BY REBECCA COLLARD

A SENIOR partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) Egypt has warned that his country’s accountants and auditors could face a flood of work if businesses and public authorities resume normal work. When chaos broke-out in Cairo last month, accounting firms suffered.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

POLICE in Montreal, Canada, have seized 2,700 photocopied textbooks and digests of textbooks that were being sold illegally to university students, arresting 13 suspects in raids on four photocopying stores. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the total value of the haul was Canadian dollars CAD540,000 (GBPounds 342,000).…

BY ALAN OSBORN

UKIP MEP and former European Commission chief accountant Marta Andreasen has called for the European Union (EU) to use external audits following claims from a former EU auditor that irregularities are swept under the carpet. Andreasen spoke to Accountancy Age in Strasbourg on the claims made byMaarten Engwirda, a Dutch auditor and former member of the EU Court of Auditors (ECA),that the ECA had been systematically intimidated and forced to water down critical findings about EU spending.…

BY RAHIMULLAH YUSUFZAI

THE FLOODS that devastated Pakistan this past summer did not just destroy farmland and housing – they ruined many financial records and legal documents, making life that much harder for accountants in Pakistan. "We don’t know how to deal with the aftermath of the floods because there is still no mechanism on the part of the government or the private sector to cope with the challenges and difficulties that our accounting community is facing," said a senior chartered accountant Rafaqat Ullah Babar.…

BY RAHIMULLAH YUSUFZAI

THE FLOODS that devastated Pakistan this past summer did not just destroy farmland and housing – they ruined many financial records and legal documents, making life that much harder for accountants in Pakistan. "We don’t know how to deal with the aftermath of the floods because there is still no mechanism on the part of the government or the private sector to cope with the challenges and difficulties that our accounting community is facing," said a senior chartered accountant RafaqatUllah Babar.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

The past two years have been tough for Price Waterhouse, India’s branch of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC). The firm has been caught up in the billion dollar Satyam scandal that exploded onto the world’s newspapers, televisions and computer screens from January 2009.…

BY MARK GODFREY

CHINA’S ministry of finance continues to emphasise its achievements in moving towards a principles-based accounting regime. Liu Yuting, director general of the accounting regulatory department at the ministry underscored his commitment to IFRS this summer by issuing a ‘Roadmap for Continuing Convergence of the Chinese Accounting Standards for Business Enterprises with the International Financial Reporting Standards’.…

BY MARK GODFREY

Albert Ng, Ernst & Young

Managing partner and chairman of E&Y’s China business, Hong Kong native Albert Ng has over 25 years of professional experience in the accounting industry in China and Australia. That background will be valuable as he moves the firm on from an embarrassing settlement over its auditing of Akai Holdings, a bankrupted Chinese electronic manufacturer and retailer.…

BY MJ DESCHAMPS, KARRYN MILLER

Australia and New Zealand share many similarities and a large number of businesses operate on both sides of the Tasman Sea – the two countries’ accounting professions are increasingly reflecting this reality. The New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants (NZICA) and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia (ICAA) are working to boost collaboration in accounting qualifications, reporting standards and other areas.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON

IF those responsible for the numerous ‘ghost’ and unfinished estates in the Republic of Ireland had been hoping that overseas property companies might be tempted to take them on, following a slight recovery in the Irish market, the news that Ireland has once more sunk into recession makes that now very unlikely for the foreseeable future.…

BY MAKKI MARSEILLES and KEITH NUTHALL

IT can only be hoped that the Euro 750 billion financial package announced by the European Union (EU) this weekend prevents Greece’s debt crisis affecting other EU member states.

If it does, then some breathing space will be bought to examine the weaknesses in the single currency – and clearly one of those is the provision of financial data by Eurozone member governments.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

MARTA Andreasen, the outspoken former European Commission chief accountant, says she will recruit accountants and auditors to work at European Union (EU) anti-fraud office OLAF, if she becomes its new director general. Speaking to Accountancy Age, she confirmed she would be applying for the vacant position, now open because of the death from cancer of OLAF’s first boss Franz-Hermann Brüner in January.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

ON January 12, Haitian accountant Kenny Laforest, 32, was having a normal day in Port-au-Prince. He had just started driving home having left his office when the earthquake that devastated his country struck. Speaking to Accountancy Age from the Haitian capital, he recalled: "I had just finished working.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS has taken yet another knock in the US$ 1 billion Satyam Computer Services scandal. India’s stock market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has rejected an application from the firm’s India branch to settle potential administrative or civil proceedings arising from the case.…

BY GARRY PIERRE-PIERRE

WHEN last month’s earthquake flattened the tax office in Haiti, killing the director, many thought that it would take years to restore the country’s tax and accounting system. The headquarters of the Direction Générale de Impôts (DGI) was destroyed and its director general Jean Frantz Richard died.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

INDIA’S largest ever financial fraud, the US$1 billion-plus Satyam computer company scam, where top management inflated revenues and laundered money for their personal gains, has shocked the Indian government into reassessing the efficacy of laws and regulations concerning corporate governance and anti money laundering (AML).…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

INDIA’S notorious Satyam Computer Services scandal has taken a turn for the worse, with the country’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) laying new charges against 10 defendants regarding fake invoices, inflated revenues, unauthorised loans and attempted cover ups.…

BY LEE ADENDORFF

RECYCLING in Italy, as in most of Europe, has ceased to be simply a form of waste disposal and has evolved into a fundamental part of the industrial grid. The sector has provided over 76,000 jobs over the last 10 years in Italy, growing by an average of 5% year-on-year to be worth around 3% of the country’s GDP today.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

A STREET in India’s capital Delhi has been named ‘Chartered Accountants’ Lane’ to recognise that its area is home to majority of the city’s chartered accountancy students and the offices of around 5,000 qualified accountants. An Indian accounting quarter in Delhi has emerged in east Delhi because accountants have wanted to work near a cluster of important institutions such as the income tax department of the finance ministry, company registration offices, the Delhi sales tax office and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India itself.…

BY RUSSELL BERMAN

AMERICA’S Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) could be altered or even scrapped entirely after the US Supreme Court agreed to consider a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the 2002 law that created it.

As the highest judicial authority on the country, the Supreme Court’s announcement on May 18 that it would hear a case this autumn brought against the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has caused a major stir.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE UK government is being threatened with legal action by the European Commission for failing to comply with legislation forcing companies receiving public subsidies to account separately for that part of their work. The law is the transparency directive (2005/81/EC) – supposed to have been written into the Statute Book by December 2006.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

THE AUDITORS caught up in India’s Satyam scandal have been charged with the offence of luring investors to buy shares of the company by "knowingly certifying forged and inflated balance sheets".

These crimes alleged against PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Subramani Gopalakrishnan and Talluri Srinivas have been detailed in a written submission by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) of India made to the High Court in the state of Andhra Pradesh.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

WHILE few accountancy bodies are yet prepared to formally comment on President Barack Obama’s sweeping plans for reforming US financial regulation, there can be little doubt that if the proposals become law the repercussions will be felt throughout the international accounting world.…

BY MARK GODFREY

The new planned G20 rules on financial stability and accounting will have less impact on mainland China than they will on Hong Kong, said Robert Agnew, CEO of Matrix Services, a consultancy advising financial firms on pan-China deals: "Mainland China has gotten its accountancy rules into line with global norms, and it now uses a limited form of fair value accounting.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH

THE NEW secretary general of the European Union (EU) financial watchdog, European Court of Auditors, does not have much on the job training to do.

When Eduardo Ruiz García took up his new posting on March 16 he had already served as a Court official for 20 years and now at 48 he has, in effect, dedicated his professional life to the well-being and improvement of the institution.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

PricewaterhouseCoopers is standing by its partners who have been caught up in India’s Satyam Computer Services scandal, despite them being formally charged by India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). In a statement released today, Price Waterhouse India (the company’s name in India) said it was "disappointed" that the two partners who worked on the audit of Satyam’s financial statements have again been denied bail.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

THE NEW CEO of India’s Satyam Computer Services has said he is confident the recent scandal that devastated his company was "probably the handiwork of a few individuals, acting in isolation." Speaking to Accountancy Age, Achutuni Sreenivasa Murty, 52, also stressed "the fraud was complex and caught everyone unaware," despite being "a company audited by one of the Big Four auditing firms".…

BY ANDREW CAVE

IT is perhaps the ultimate irony in the anti-money laundering crusade. The industry, devoted as it is to the movement of cash and software algorithms that help track it, has no shortage of statistics detailing the numbers of suspicious transactions reported, illegal monies seized and criminals prosecuted.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH

WHISTLEBLOWER MEP Paul van Buitenen, who is standing down from the European Parliament in June, will shortly apply to re-join his previous employer, the European Commission, following an unpaid leave of absence for the past five years.

Under its personnel rules, the Commission must take back former officials who left to serve on the parliament.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

THE SATYAM Computers scandal has prompted India’s dominant IT and outsourcing sector to plot a corporate governance scheme that would promote the use of forensic accountants in the industry.

Mayur Joshi, founder and CEO of Indiaforensic Consultancy Services, claims that the trade body of India’s IT industry Nasscom is planning to beef up its due diligence accounting guidelines that would effectively "entrust the task of detecting and preventing the fraud to the forensic accountants".…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

ONE of the Indian PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) partners who has been arrested over suspicions of involvement with the Satyam Computer Services accounting scandal has now being found guilty of professional misconduct in another case by the disciplinary committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI).…

BY DAVID HAWORTH

THE BRUSSELS office for whistle-blower MEP Paul Van Buitenen told Accountancy Age that the Dutchman will not be standing for a second term of office on the European Parliament in June. The admission follows reports in the Amsterdam Telegraaf and Netherlands television that Van Buitenen was not planning to renew his electoral mandate.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

ONE of the most striking developments in the fight against money laundering over the past 10 years has been the growing sophistication and alertness of traditional bank clerks and other comparatively low level financial service company staff in the detection of suspicious activity and the vetting of new clients.…

BY MARK GODFREY

THOUGH its top trading partners continue to stick with the fair value or mark to market principle set by the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), China remains unwilling to embrace the principle. Though Beijing, keen to nurture its companies into global corporate champions, has been bringing its Accounting Standards for Business Enterprises (ASBE) closer to the IFRS it won’t require listed firms to use the fair value approach – “not for the foreseeable future,” Dickson Leung, partner at the Beijing offices of Lehman Brown has told Accountancy Age.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

THE CLEANING up process of the accounts of scandal-hit India IT company Satyam has now begun and could take more than six months. KPMG and Deloitte have been mandated by the IT company’s new central government-appointed board to scrutinise its accounts.…

BY MARK GODFREY

MURKY dealings in the China’s corporate world suggest that the country’s adherence to acceptable accounting standards may be more in word that practice. Huang Guangyu, China’s second richest man and founder of electric retailing giant Gome, was accused in December of "financial crimes" by the China’s ministry of public security, which oversees the police.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

WITH the Satyam scandal seriously affecting his big four firm’s global goodwill, on Thursday PricewaterhouseCooper’s international CEO Samuel DiPiazza rushed to New Delhi to meet India’s corporate affairs minister Prem Chand Gupta.

The meeting is seen by accounting industry experts as an effort to salvage PWC’s businesses in the country and explain the firm’s position in the billion-dollar fraud in which two of its auditing partners are behind bars.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL, GAVIN BLAIR, and MARK GODFREY

BACK in November 2008, long before the accession of Barack Obama to the US presidency, world leaders gathered together under the G20 banner to forge a common response to the ongoing financial crisis.…

BY JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

THE VICTORY of the next USA president, Barack Obama and the expansion of his Democratic Party’s control over Congress are likely to dampen calls to end the use of fair value accounting in America.

With Democrats now firmly in charge of the country’s economic agenda, supporters of fair value accounting can probably breathe a sigh of relief this side of the Atlantic.…

By Alan Osborn

The world is not over-full of specialist academics at universities and colleges teaching anti-money laundering (AML) methods – but these important experts are out there if you look for them. Their low profile is partly because the subject is often subsumed into financial crime generally and partly because genuine AML skills can command a useful premium to banks and other major financial institutions better able to support lavish salaries and back-up systems.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

A MAJOR strengthening of Canada’s regulations and programmes fighting money laundering and terrorist financing has taken place in 2008 and will continue into 2009, going a long way towards erasing the worryingly negative impression left by last year’s report by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).…

By RUSSELL BERMAN

THE ROUNDTABLE convened in Washington DC by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to examine American accounting practices has heard little support for a major overhaul of fair value accounting rules during its second meeting. Instead, financial industry professionals urged regulators to focus on smaller changes to improve mark-to-market reporting.…

BY SARAH BROWN

A FORMER chairman of America’s federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has called on the incoming Obama administration in the USA to start working on accounting reforms as soon as the new president takes office on January 20.

Speaking to Accountancy Age a day after the decisive election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States, William M Isaac said: "I think generally that our accounting rules, as well as the way in which we set them, ought to be a very high priority for the Obama administration."…

BY RUSSELL BERMAN

AS policymakers in Washington DC and in capitals worldwide contemplate changes in accounting standards to stem the financial meltdown, one of the men leading the charge against the mark-to-market requirement is Wayne Abernathy.

He is the executive vice president for financial and regulatory affairs at the American Bankers Association (ABA), an influential trade group that for years has railed against so-called fair value accounting.…

BY JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

BARACK Obama, the frontrunner presidential candidate, has been silent on issues of importance to the accountancy profession, such as whether he is for suspending fair value accounting principles, despite the financial turmoil affecting US markets.

Senator Obama’s opponent in the race for the White House, John McCain, has said twice he favours suspending fair value accounting requirements in a bid to ameliorate the credit crisis.…

BY JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

EMPLOYEES of the big four accountancy firms are almost twice as likely to donate money to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign than to John McCain’s. A search of campaign contribution database at OpenSecrets.org shows nearly 640 employees at the big four have contributed to Senator Obama’s campaign, while only 326 employees have donated to Senator McCain.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) third money laundering directive should have been transposed into national legislation by December last year across the EU. But some EU member states and professional organisations have found its provisions difficult, particularly the introduction of a risk-based approach to the application of anti money laundering disciplines.…

BY JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

THE ACCOUNTANCY profession in the United States might think its day of reckoning came and went in 2002. But those who thought that the Sarbanes Oxley Act was the final word in regulation for the accounting profession may be in for a rude surprise.…

BY SARAH BROWN

THOMAS Jones, the British vice chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has told Accountancy Age that his organisation would be working closely with the United States’ Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to work toward a cohesive response to concerns about fair value rules.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

NO official global body exists to help in assessing the quantity and quality of anti money laundering schools, colleges and consultants throughout the world, but the number must certainly run into the thousands – and by far the majority of them are in the US.…

By Keith Nuthall

International News Services has an unorthodox correspondent called Belinda Blessed. She is unusual, in that she does not actually exist. She is a virtual reporter and is operated by agency writers who report on the virtual world Second Life.

Corporations, universities, governments, and international organisations have all built virtual offices on islands in Second Life. They use these spaces to have meetings, where digital representations of their employees, officials, academics and students can converse when they cannot meet physically. Second Life also offers these organisations opportunities to offer and deliver services, publish information and marketing material and even sell goods.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

THE WORLD is not over-full of specialist academic experts at universities and colleges teaching anti-money laundering methods. This is partly because the subject is often subsumed into financial crime generally and partly because genuine AML skills can command a useful premium to banks and other major financial institutions better able to support lavish salaries and back-up systems.…

By Gavin Blair

Though the number of academic specialists in commercial crime in the Asia-Pacific region may be fewer than in the US or Europe, many of the leading figures are both willing to work with corporate clients and have a great deal of experience outside the ivory towers.…

BY MARK GODFREY, in Beijing

THE DAILY deluge of crime reports in China’s press indicates that corruption and fraud are not only still rife in the country they are most acute where government regulatory bodies hand out business licences and approvals to state-owned firms.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THIS year could well see the end of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Doha Development Round, the global free trade negotiations staged since 2001 – and the stakes for the telecommunications business are high.

Unlike most economic sectors, telecoms are affected by not just one WTO agreement on removing trade barriers such as red tape and punishing tariffs, but three: the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS); the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) as regards industrial goods; and the WTO Information Technology Agreement.…

BY GAVIN BLAIR, in Tokyo

THOUGH the number of academic specialists in commercial crime in the Asia-Pacific region may be fewer than in the US or Europe, many of the leading figures are both willing to work with corporate clients and have a great deal of experience outside the ivory towers.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

MARTA Andreasen, former chief accountant of the European Commission, has told Accountancy Age she will appeal against a ruling by the Civil Service Tribunal of the European Court of Justice upholding her dismissal by the European Commission. Ms Andreasen was suspended by the Commission in 2002 and later sacked after exposing failures and weaknesses in the EU’s accounting procedures.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

THE MONEY Laundering Bulletin has found effects of the European Union’s (EU) second money laundering directive’s (2MLD) extension of EU anti-money laundering regulations to a range of businesses and professions are complicated by differences in the definition of the professions between the 27 member states.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL, in the real world, and BELINDA BLESSED, in Second Life

EVERY decade or so comes a technology that is so new, comprehensive, interesting, and damn useful, that it completely changes the way that we have fun and do business.…

BY MARK GODFREY, in Beijing

LISTENING to the war stories being swapped at the Thursday night corporate networking parties that regularly fill Beijing’s five star hotel bars leaves the impression that doing business in China is comparable to sticking your head into a bucket of piranhas.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THERE can be fewer larger accountancy jobs than a complete overhaul of the accounting systems of all United Nations organisations, but such a project is underway, and – some would say true to form – the UN is now splashing cash on external accounting consultants.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels, and KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN Union (EU) anti-fraud office OLAF has taken a lot of flack in recent years, accused of being slow, over-aggressive, secretive and even sloppy. But it has a tough job, made harder by the unwillingness of some EU member states to publicise their management of the EU funds they handle.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON, in London

WHEN DISASTER strikes, public generosity and government donations direct huge sums of money to help survivors and repair local economies. However, what happens next is out of the donors’ hands. They have to trust that the various aid agencies and organisations overseas are directing funds to bona fide projects and individuals.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

BRITAIN’S Department for Communities and Local Government has been warned by the European Commission that it must sort out shortcomings in its auditing of European Union regional development spending in England or risk aid payments worth millions of Euros being suspended.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL and DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels

SIIM Kallas is the first European Commission to have been appointed with the explicit job of fighting fraud in the European Union (EU). Every anti-fraud specialist knows that the complex and sometimes opaque procedures and administration of the EU can present a honeypot to fraudsters, and the EU has long had difficulty in nailing the problem.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Agency for Reconstruction (EAR) is trying to boost financial discipline in the public services of Kosovo, teaching budgeting management and drafting skills to civil servants. The aim is to keep budgets and books tight from the start, so there are fewer messes to clear up later by the province’s government accounting and audit teams.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE LATEST annual report from European Union (EU) anti-fraud unit OLAF has revealed how an accounts department staff member of a European Commission delegation to Africa diverted Euro 300,000 of EU money to his own bank account. The official, who had been recruited locally, "systematically falsified the signatures of duly authorised delegation staff on several cheques, payment orders and other accounting documents," noted OLAF, which has kept the country of operation under wraps.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA, in New Delhi

"WE will expedite the adoption of accounting standards in alignment with the International Accounting Standards", said India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a recent statement (18th March 06). With this, he cleared all doubt about his government’s support for the adoption in India of global accounting norms.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA, in New Delhi

AN ALL-INDIA topper in school, the best performer in 1980 within his country’s Chartered Accountants’ Institute, and the first to hoist the sail of accountancy-outsourcing to India: Sunil Goel, 49, combines his academic knowledge, business skills and passion for information technology to reap the benefits of globally expanding business.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

BRITISH government financial controls will be examined by a special European Parliament committee of inquiry into the near collapse of Equitable Life, and the slashing of its pensions. The parliament has launched its probe following complaints from policy-holders, especially the around 15,000 non-British clients, mainly from Germany and Ireland.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

THE US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has attempted to allay fears arising from reports that it plans a significant rise in inspections of foreign audit firms in 2006, saying that while the number would rise this was due to "natural growth" and did not indicate any change of policy or any new concerns about foreign auditors.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

INTERNATIONAL accountancy firms will be closely monitoring next week’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit in Hong Kong for signs that the WTO’s long-running Doha Development Round talks are about to crack open national accounting and auditing markets. Progress in refreshing the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) has been sluggish since talks began in 2000, one year ahead of the general round, with few trade-offs being offered in bilateral exchanges.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has called on European Union (EU) countries to further liberalise their professions, including legal specialists, although a Communication’ policy paper praises Britain for its reforms. The UK “is making good progress” across the board in fighting restrictive practices regarding profession entry, fees and advertising, along with Denmark and the Netherlands, said Brussels.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission is holding a legislative bonfire, releasing details of financial proposals it will abandon under a drive by its current regime to simplify European Union (EU) laws and lessen their impact on industry. Most of the proposals earmarked for the shredder have encountered political opposition from the EU Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, making it difficult for the Commission to get them passed into law.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has called on European Union (EU) countries to further liberalise their professions, including accountancy, although a detailed report praises Britain for its reforms. The UK “is making good progress” across the board in fighting restrictive practices regarding profession entry, fees and advertising, along with Denmark and the Netherlands, said Brussels.…

Keith Nuthall
MARTA Andreasen, the former chief accounting officer of the European Commission who was dismissed last year after exposing serious weaknesses in the Brussels accounting system, is chasing business having established her own consultancy business in recent months. Ms Andreasen added that she had abandoned two cases she was bringing against the Commission in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and had begun a new action seeking the annulment of her dismissal and heavy damages exceeding Euro 1 million based on an alleged violation of the European Convention on Human Rights and Commission staff regulations.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels, and KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Commission official has told Accountancy Age that the ‘high level tax group’ set up to consider the implications of the Marks & Spencer tax case may be just “gesture politics”, given the difficulties of making reforms to the European Union’s (EU) court system.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has made the case for governments and inter-governmental organisations increasing their influence over cross-border accountancy bodies, such as the International Accounts Standards Board (IASB). In a green paper on financial services, Brussels said that “the debate about the future governance, funding and political accountability of global standard-setting bodies….are…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SUDDENLY accountants are being held in unusually high esteem and it’s all because of their work in connection with the relief effort for victims of the Boxing Day tsunami. To date some Pounds 4.7 billion for the stricken countries has been raised worldwide but nothing like that sum has yet got through to the people affected; some of it stolen perhaps and some of it wasted, but a lot of it bogged down in inadequate financial infrastructures: step forward the big multinational accountancy firms who have provided staff, management and professional advice and training, a good deal of it on a pro bono publico basis.…

Keith Nuthall
IT is good to know that Accountancy Age is required reading for European Commissioners, even when researching jokes for their usually dry speeches. Administrative affairs Commissioner Siim Kallas shamelessly plundered our wry linking of his job title with the ministerial moniker of Yes Minister’s hapless Jim Hacker.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission is expected to investigate the professional indemnity insurance market in the UK as part of a wider look into the business insurance sector, Commission officials have confirmed. The investigation has been ordered by Neelie Kroes, the EU competition commissioner, and is expected to begin in June.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Accountants Federation (FEE) is assessing moves at the European Union (EU) to pass legislation that reflects some of the changes made in the USA under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The FEE is preparing a position paper on the EU’s 8th company law directive, which is primarily concerned with auditing issues, but, said a spokesman, is “not exactly equivalent to section 404 of the SO Act because it doesn’t require an audited statement regarding the internal control of the company”.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE BRUSSELS whistle-blower Marta Andreasen, who was sacked late last year as chief accountant of the European Commission two years after exposing serious weaknesses in its accounting system, has been rebuffed by MEPs in her attempts to find a job with the European Parliament (EP).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

INTERNATIONAL accountancy firms will be closely monitoring next week’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit in Hong Kong for signs that the WTO’s long-running Doha Development Round talks are about to crack open national accounting and auditing markets. Progress in refreshing the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) has been sluggish since talks began in 2000, one year ahead of the general round, with few trade-offs being offered in bilateral exchanges.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has released formal requests to World Trade Organisation (WTO) member countries to liberalise their services sectors, including accountancy, under the Doha Development Round. Financial services are explicitly mentioned in these bilateral demands, addressed directly to all 103 WTO member governments.…

Keith Nuthall
THE LATEST government debt figures from European Union (EU) statistical agency Eurostat shows that Italy and Greece have a long way to go before breathing easy over their governments’ indebtedness. Under the Growth and Stability Pact underpinning the value of the Euro, any country using the currency with debt exceeding 60% of GDP must ensure they are steadily moving towards the black.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
MARTA Andreasen, the European Commission’s former chief accountant who was sacked in November, has been offered a glimmer of hope for re-instatement in her old job by the new Barroso Commission, which has just taken office in Brussels.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
FEW whistle-blowers have hit the headlines as much as accountant Marta Andreasen who was suspended by the European Commission in 2002 after disclosing serious weaknesses in its bookkeeping system and has now just been formally sacked.

Of all those who have taken the brave and often lonely path of public disclosure, Ms Andreasen, as the Commission’s former chief accounting officer, is by far the most senior.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
CHRIS Dickson, the Executive counsel of the Accountant’s Joint Disciplinary Scheme, spoke powerfully in defence of the European Commission’s sacked chief accountant Marta Andreasen at her disciplinary hearing in Brussels last month, Accountancy Age can reveal.

He represented her pro bono publico, appealing for her reinstatement in front of the entire outgoing Commission, a call that fell on deaf ears, with her former employers later ordering her dismissal.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
MARTA ANDREASEN, former chief accountant of the European Commission, expects to hear in a matter of days whether or not she is to be dismissed for breaching staff regulations, she said today (Thurs 30-9). Ms Andreasen has been suspended for over two years following her public disclosures of serious weaknesses in the Commission’s accounting procedures and an internal Commission disciplinary board has recommended her dismissal.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE NEW president of the European Commission, the former Portuguese prime minister Jose Manuel Barroso, has made clear that for the next five years at least there will be a reform-minded team at work in Brussels driven by a powerful desire to eliminate accounting fraud, inefficiency and the protection of special interests.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FORMER European Commission Chief Accountant Marta Andreasen is finally set to learn the outcome of her long-running disciplinary proceedings, sparked by her suspension in 2002 for whistle-blowing. Brussels is expected to take action based on the recommendations of a disciplinary board headed by the ex-president of the European Court of Justice’s Court of First Instance, José Luis da Cruz Vilaça.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CELEBRATED European Union (EU) whistleblower Paul van Buitenen has been elected to the European Parliament, daring the European Commission to sack him for the criticisms he made of the EU in his election manifesto. More a book than a policy platform, van Buitenen laid into his former boss Neil Kinnock, who he has accused of erecting “hoax” accounting reforms to the much-criticised EU.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels
MICHAEL Mann, European Commission vice president Neil Kinnock’s spokesman has takes issue with the suggestion raised by former chief auditor Jules Muis in an exclusive interview with Accountancy Age that difficulties foreseen in Brussels internal controls White Paper have been underestimated by the Prodi regime.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s much-heralded financial reforms will not be fully realised for at least another five years, possibly later, according to Jules Muis, the Commission’s former chief internal auditor.

“Although progress has been made, the Commission has a long way to go before it can present an image of being a world class administrative machine,” he told Accountancy Age during a brief return to the Belgian capital.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
HIGH-PROFILE European Commission whistleblower Paul van Buitenen will reveal a litany of European Union (EU) scandals and corruption cases when he releases his programme this month for the oncoming European elections. Exploiting rules that allow European Commission officials to stand for the parliament and make detailed election statements, van Buitenen is publishing a book ‘In the Trenches of Brussels’ on April 28, which will officially be his election manifesto.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE RECENT announcement of an investigation of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company by US security regulators can be traced to faulty implementation of new accounting software, says the company. The Securities and Exchange Commission launched a formal investigation February 5 into the company’s accounting problems.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EURATOM has released its 2002 report on inquiries carried out by its European Commission officials tasked with checking the safety and security of nuclear installations across the European Union (EU); although the paper’s conclusions was generally satisfactory, it notes a number of problems detected that required resolution.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE, in Brisbane
AUSTRALIAN accountants spend far more time in front of the mirror these days. They are not vainly checking on their tans but seeing if they are a shade of ‘cool blue’ or ‘hot-blooded red’. Colour testing is all the rage at leading accountancy firms Down Under, with PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG and Ernst and Young among those promoting the practice.…

Keith Nuthall
EUROPEAN Union (EU) anti-fraud agency OLAF has confirmed to Accountancy Age that “there have been missions (of its officials) carried out in Palestine in January” examining allegations of fraud involving EU funds in the occupied territories. The probes follow bookkeeping checks made last Spring, following calls for action from some MEPs alleging that part of the monthly payments of Euro 10 million made by the EU to the Palestinian Authority have been used to fund terrorist activities.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
MARTA Andreasen, former chief accountant of the European Commission, is challenging a gagging order by the Commission, which is accusing her of speaking at conferences without permission. Ms Andreasen was suspended from her post over a year ago after she voiced criticism of the Commission’s accounting procedures, though she has yet to face formal charges.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SIGNIFICANT rise in fraud committed within and against the institutions and programmes of the European Union (EU) will be reported by the next annual report of EU anti-fraud body OLAF, which has been obtained by Accountancy Age.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
AN INCREASE in the amount of fraud and irregularities reported to European Union anti-fraud unit OLAF will be noted in the organisation’s next annual report, which is about to be published, an OLAF official has told Accountancy Age.…

BY MARK ROWE and KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) is piling pressure on the 10 eastern and southern European countries joining the organisation next May to abolish tax laws that currently break EU regulations and directives. The EU Council of Ministers has drawn up a list of 30 tax measures deemed “harmful” to Europe’s internal market that apply in the countries planning to join the EU next year, namely Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IT is an odd and depressing fact that employees who expose corruption, negligence and other malpractices in their work-place usually end up more reviled and outcast than those actually responsible for the wrong-doing in the first place. The institutions of the European Union offer excellent case studies in this regard.…

Keith Nuthall
Gavin as Muis’s resignation is not quite new I’ve led with Marta after

speaking to her this morning. Regards Alan (01702 582 332)

Marta Andreasen, the former chief accountant of the European Commission who

was suspended last year by EC vice-president Neil Kinnock following

disclosures of serious weakness in budget procedures, has written to Mr

Kinnock asking to be appointed as head of the Commission’s internal audit

service, replacing the present audit chief Jules Muis who is to resign

early next year.…

Keith Nuthall
SEVERAL thousand small and medium-sized companies throughout the EU

are to be exempted from certain accounting provisions following agreement

by European ministers on raising the qualifying thresholds. Under EU rules both small and medium sized companies are permitted to publish only an abridged balance sheet, abridged notes to the accounts and an abridged profit and loss account while small companies are further exempted from publishing a profit and loss account or an

annual report, from disclosing certain types of information in their

accounts and from having their accounts audited.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A NEW report on accountancy fraud has found that US companies are so desperate to inflate their earnings they are prepared to pay millions of dollars in tax on this fantasy income. Is this the ultimate example of pure greed trampling over common sense or are such businesses once more ahead of the game?…

Keith Nuthall
The end of the Marta Andreasen affair, which at one time cast

doubts over the discharge of the EU’s pounds 65 million budget for 2001,

may be in sight according to Brussels insiders. The betting is that

European Commission vice-president Neil Kinnock will drop disciplinary

proceedings against Ms Andreasen, the EC’s former chief accountant who was

suspended by Mr Kinnock last year after voicing criticism of the

Commission’s accounting procedures.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITISH accountants are the second most lightly regulated in the European Union (EU), with their Danish colleagues having the most freedom according to a European Commission-funded survey, promoting liberalisation in Europe’s professions. Belgium, Austria and Germany – where heavy regulation is often favoured – have the union’s most tightly restricted accountancy professions.…

Keith Nuthall
Mr Neil Kinnock, vice-president of the European Commission, appears

likely to escape any censure by the European Parliament over the so-called

Andreason affair and the matter is now expected to be put finally to rest

next week. Mr Kinnock has come under fire over attacks on the Commission’s

accounting procedures by its former chief accountant Marta Andreason who

was suspended from her post by Mr Kinnock last year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
STREAMLINING, multi-tasking and flexible posting of employees may be important weapons in the arsenal of a personnel team looking at getting the most efficiency out of their company, but managers had better make sure that their policies are legal, not only under national laws, but European law too.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Parliament now seems almost certain to refuse to rubber stamp the books for the EU’s Pounds 65 billion budget ()for 2001 next month (April) following new disclosures in the row over revelations of serious weaknesses in the European Commission’s accounting procedures by its former chief accountant Marta Andreason.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
NEIL Kinnock, vice-president of the European Commission, is to appear before the budgetary control committee of the European Parliament tomorrow (Tuesday) in a crucial session for the credibility of the Commission’s accounting procedures and possibly for Mr Kinnock’s own future in Brussels.…

BY MARK ROWE and ALAN OSBORN, in London, PHILIP FINE and MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal, and RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg

RATCHETING up security has been a prime concern of the nuclear industry since the September 11 attacks, with all countries possessing commercial reactors addressing the issue to some extent.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
Europe’s ambitious Galileo programme to establish a global satellite navigation system is clearly a project that likes to keep its supporters in a state of fairly constant nervous tension. At a cost of 3.2 billion euros, Galileo was never a sure-fire runner to begin with.…

Keith Nuthall
ACCOUNTANTS should help develop standardised accounting methods to operate greenhouse gas trading systems created because of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, says a new United Nations report, co-authored by finance industry heavy hitters, such as the Dresdner Bank Prudential and Swiss Re.…

BY PHILIP FINE

ARTHUR Andersen LLP has all but shut its doors, after the former accountancy powerhouse relinquished its licence to practice auditing in every American state. The US member firm of Andersen Worldwide, which was once the fifth largest auditing firm in the country, told the US Securities and Exchange Commission it would cease auditing public companies.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IN September 1901 the legendary American tycoon James Buchanan “Buck” Duke entered the office of the Player brothers’ cigarette firm in Nottingham with the unforgettable words: “Hello boys, I’m Duke from New York, come to buy your business.”…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission will this month decide whether to start launching inquiries into the piecemeal dismantling of the falling Andersen empire. Competition spokeswoman Amelia Torres told Accountancy Age that Brussels had now been officially informed of the proposed acquisition by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu of Andersen UK and had until July 1 to say whether the deal should be cleared or “whether we need to take a closer look at it.”…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission is “continuously monitoring” developments involving the accountancy firm Andersen following the collapse of the proposed merger between the firm’s non-American operations and those of KPMG, officials have told Accountancy Age.

Brussels is concerned about the implications if Andersen’s practices are picked up piecemeal by local or international firms; if parts of Andersen were sold off to other major accountancy

firms on a local basis this “could justify an inquiry” but each case would be judged on its own merits, the official said.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission today told Accountancy Age that it is “fairly certain” to investigate the proposed merger between Andersen’s non-US operations and KPMG and warned that its competition authority could well insist that the accounting giants sell off some of their European operations as a condition of clearing the deal.…

Keith Nuthall
PROPOSALS that could streamline applications by foreign accountants to work in Britain must take account of their need to have sufficient English skills and knowledge of local taxes and law, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants has said.

Director Mike Walsh told Accountancy Age said that proposals from the European Commission on the mutual recognition of professional qualifications needed careful scrutiny, so that standards are protected.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice has ruled that the Netherlands, and by precedent other Member States, has the right to prevent lawyers entering into multi-disciplinary partnerships with accountants, even though it accepts that this may restrict competition in legal services.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission is drawing up detailed guidelines informing its staff when they can talk to the media and the public, without breaching their contracts, following criticism from the European Ombudsman Jacob Söderman that existing rules were “insufficiently clear.”…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission is preparing a potentially groundbreaking initiative to overcome the problems created by the existence of 15 different tax systems throughout the European Union, which could involve setting a harmonised EU corporation tax. In a report due to be released shortly, obtained by Accountancy Age, the Commission says differing tax national systems have caused losses in economic efficiency, generated compliance costs and contributed to a lack of transparency.…

Keith Nuthall
DETAILS of the European Commission’s plans to reduce the contrasts between tax regimes in EU Member States have been released, with Brussels publishing its policy paper “Towards an Internal Market without Tax Obstacles.”

As predicted in Accountancy Age, the Commission is aiming in the long term for the creation of a consolidated tax base for businesses operating across the EU, with the report highlighting the 30 per cent variations in national company tax rates.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal, Canada
DING Dong! Avon calling!

Traditionally, this familiar greeting of the faithful cosmetic lady would have women riffling through their mini catalogues and choosing cherry red lipstick and skin firming creams but all that is about to change.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
NEXT year, Avon customers across Canada will not only be enticed by beauty products but they will also have the chance to be advised on a variety of services from legal, travel and accountancy services to roofers and plumbers.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
AFTER 15 years of negotiations, China has reached agreement on the terms of its accession to the World Trade Organisation, thereby opening the way for British accountancy firms to set up shop in the world’s most populous market.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
DING Dong! Avon calling!

Traditionally, this familiar greeting of the faithful cosmetic lady would have women riffling through their mini-catalogues and choosing cherry red lipstick, ultra-voluminising mascara and skin firming creams but all that is about to change.…

Keith Nuthall
MEMBER governments of the World Trade Organisation are to examine in detail proposals made by the Australian government for the dismantling of bureaucratic barriers that prevent accountants from practising in foreign countries.

Its detailed suggested were made in to the ongoing services round of the WTO, in Geneva, which has just reached the end of its first stage.…