One crooked accountant acted as look out while her brother bashed an old man, another was sentenced to home detention for fraud and one stole money from a school to buy a waterbed. No, it is not a script from a Jerry Springer show.
One crooked accountant acted as look out while her brother bashed an old man, another was sentenced to home detention for fraud and one stole money from a school to buy a waterbed.
No, it is not a script from a Jerry Springer show. These were all cases heard during recent New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountant (NZICA) disciplinary tribunals.
If tribunal chairman Jim Hoare was at all bemused by the particularly bizarre cases dealt with this past week, he did a great job of hiding it.
Despite comments from NBR ONLINE readers about the antics of dodgy criminal accountants, NZICA chief executive Terry McLaughlin believes the fact the organisation's disciplinary tribunals are so transparent means business can in fact trust the CA’s registered with them.
“We take our statutory responsibilities very seriously. Employing an NZICA member actually gives you a lot of comfort. There are not many people regulated in the same way as NZICA members,” he says.
Mr McLaughlin says the fact there are some stories to tell about some of their members reflects that disciplinary processes are run effectively.
“Other people don’t run these processes; there aren’t avenues of complaint available. They don’t have disciplinary processes and codes of ethics to be enforced against.”
According to Mr McLaughlin, the recent spate of tribunal decisions, which saw all four accountants struck off, including a finance controller who stole $40 million, was not unusual, except perhaps for the nature of their transgressions.
“In broad terms we would get 100 to 120 complaints a year. Last year we had 99, 134 in 2010 and 142 in 2009,” he says, adding that the fact these numbers are available in NZICA’s annual report reflect the organisation’s transparency.
For the first quarter of this year, 27 cases have been heard, 33 were heard last year for the same period and 18 in 2010.
“There is certainly no trending issue and no change in how we go about our business. If you look at those 27 this year, while 20 were struck off, the rest were suspended or censured,” he says.
While Mr McLaughlin admits the latest bout of disciplinary tribunal hearings were “bizarre” he says there is no evidence to suggest there has been an increase in chartered accountants breaching NZICA’s code of conduct, nor has there been a spike in complaints.
“It’s a very small minority of our membership. We have 33,000 members, so the people who end up on the wrong end of the tribunal are less than 1% of our membership,” he says.
NZICA is regulated by law which requires the body to have a disciplinary tribunal.
“We have been operating for 104 years. The core difference of a professional person is that they are bound by a code of ethics, these are high quality people,” he says.
Those struck off this week, however, certainly did not live up to these standards.
Geraldine accountant, Shilo Marie King not only acted as a lookout while her brother beat up an elderly man, she also stole more than $35,000 from two voluntary organisations.
In October, she was sentenced to 11 months' home detention for assault, burglary and theft.
Wellington accountant and finance controller Stephen John Roberts was struck off the Institute of Chartered Accountants register after committing a $40 million fraud through more than 500 transactions.
Tuakau accountant Neil Jack Mercer, who is serving a two-year jail sentence after being convicted of theft by a person in a special relationship, was struck off.
Former chairman of Wellington Free Ambulance, member of the Victoria University council and a former associate commissioner on the Commerce Commission Shaan Stevens was struck off after being convicted of 22 offences in the Wellington District Court in September.
And a group of international yachting companies were taken for a ride by Shelley Williams after the Hayes Knight business services manager failed to file tax returns even though clients had been charged for the preparation of the documents.
Hayes Knight had to do $150,000 worth of damage control to fix the accounts.
Despite these horror stories, Mr McLaughlin insists there is "good openness and transparency", and the disciplinary tribunal decisions speak for themselves.
"I can’t comment on why these things happened and we don’t have a track record like this,” says Mr Mclaughlin.
A case of client be very careful when you entrust your financial affairs to an accountant.
