Chartered Accountant Christopher Ram said the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Guyana (ICAG) is yet to properly respond to one of its members on a complaint made against the Minister of Finance with regard to the conflict of interest situation created by the appointment of his wife to a high post in the Audit Office.
“They have not responded to Robert McRae and he has asked me to follow it up. We had expected an acknowledgement from them and an indication on how they would have proceeded with the matter,” Ram told this newspaper yesterday.
Sources indicate that the ICAG is “very uncomfortable” with the matter, but many of its members may be afraid to speak out since some of them receive audit contracts from the Audit Office when that agency needs to outsource.
“I don’t believe anything has happened so far,” Ram said, noting that the Vice Chairman of the ICAG has called the situation a conflict of interest one, and so has former Auditor General Anand Goolsarran.
Meanwhile, Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the National Assembly Carl Greenidge is yet to receive more than an acknowledgement from the ICAG in relation to his correspondence to them. He wrote to the body requesting guidance on the perceived conflict of interest situation created by the appointment of the Minister of Finance’s wife to the post of Audit Director at the Audit Office some days before McRae lodged his complaint.
Sources close to the ICAG have confirmed that the council is considering Greenidge’s request and it is treating the matter with some measure of urgency.
It was at a meeting of the PAC on June 25, that the PPP/C took advantage of the absence of Alliance for Change (AFC) member Trevor Williams to vote on the appointment of a number of staffers, including Mrs Singh, to various positions in the Audit Office.
During the first week of July, McRae, one of the partners of the Ram & McRae accounting firm, lodged a complaint with the institute against Minister of Finance Singh, alleging that he has continually broken the law while in control of public spending.
In his complaint, McRae noted that one of ICAG’s functions is to regulate the discipline and professional conduct of its members and its registered students by maintaining strict professional ethics. He said if the act and the by-laws apply to students they must surely apply to the conduct of the country’s highest ranking chartered accountant.
In his complaint, McRae lists a number of violations of the constitution, breaches to Section 41 of the Fiscal Management and Account-ability Act 2003, conflict of interest, conflict of duties, violations of the audit requirements of the Companies Act 1991, and violations of Sections 158 to 160 of the Companies Act 1991.
He said that Dr Singh as Minister of Finance is the most high profile chartered accountant in Guyana and that the powers and duties of the Minister of Finance are set out principally in the constitution and the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act (FMAA) 2003. Further, he said that Dr Singh is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), which is a government company under the Companies Act 1991, and at the same time is the subject Minister of NICIL reporting to the National Assembly on that company under the Public Corporations Act.
With regard to conflict of interest, McRae noted that since August 2006, Dr Singh has been serving as the senior Minister of Finance creating a conflict of interest situation with the Office of the Auditor General where his wife, Ms Geetanjali Singh is the senior most qualified accountant.
“To compound the conflict Dr Singh is also Chairman of the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited which is also audited by the Audit Office of Guyana,” he said.
“While it should be noted that the responsibility is usually on the auditor to remove himself or herself from the conflict, it is my contention that Dr Singh knew or ought to have known that by accepting the appointment he was being placed in a position of conflict and should have taken steps to prevent such a situation,” McRae said.
Additionally, he also contended that there is a conflict of duties, observing that it is a fundamental precept of the profession that a member must remove himself from any situation which threatens his independence and puts him in a position where he has a conflict of interest which has been defined to include a conflict of duties.
“As Chairman and director of the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited, Dr Singh owes a fiduciary duty to the company. In his dual roles as Chairman and director Dr Singh individually and collectively effectively reports to himself under the Public Corporations Act No. 21 of 1988 for which he has parliamentary responsibility and cannot therefore faithfully execute his fiduciary responsibility,” he wrote.
“I would also urge the Institute to be mindful that in the discharge of its function to ‘regulate the practice of accountancy’ it must ensure that accounts, and importantly the public accounts of Guyana, are prepared and audited to the highest standards prescribed by the International Federation of Accountants and adopted by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Guyana,” McRae said in his complaint to the ICAG.
