Dear Editor,
Just a day after I wrote my letter re Anand Goolsarran’s NICIL audit, I noticed another SN article on January 25 by Mr Goolsarran. This article, where Goolsarran went into a discussion of his NICIL audit shows his rather unprofessional side, and I decided to do a forensic audit into the bona fides of Mr Goolsarran.
I started my investigation on the website of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Guyana (ICAG) and found that Anand Goolsarran is not a member of this august body which was established under the ICAG Act 1991. On further investigation I found that Mr Goolsarran had not fulfilled the requirement that calls for qualified applicants to work under the supervision of a practising Chartered Accountant.
Mr Goolsarran does not have a practising certificate as an accountant in Guyana. He cannot sign off on any audit under the Companies Act. So here is an unlicensed auditor investigating officials.
Yours faithfully,
Manzoor Nadir
Editor’s note
We sent a copy of this letter to Mr Anand Goolsarran for any comment he might wish to make, and received the following response:
“I am a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (FCCA) of the United Kingdom with Master and Doctorate degrees in Business Administration. I am also a trained fraud and forensic auditor with significant experience in the field, having served as Auditor General from 1990 to 2004 as well as on the United Nations Board of Auditors and Panel of External Auditors from 2005 to 2012.
“I am a Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Guyana (ICAG) and once held the position of Secretary in the 1990s. However, I am in arrears in terms of the payment of my annual subscription. I cannot afford to pay two sets of subscriptions since I am now a retiree, and no added benefit would accrue to me from my membership of the ICAG or any other professional body for that matter.
“A practising certificate from the ICAG is only needed if one is to be appointed an external auditor of a company under the Companies Act 1991. I am not the external auditor of any company in Guyana, and this includes NICIL. An external auditor reviews the financial statements of an entity; carries out whatever tests he/she considers necessary to express an opinion of their fair presentation in compliance with applicable laws, regulations, policy guidelines etc; and reports annually to shareholders at annual general meetings.
“I have done four forensic audits for the Government ‒ NICIL, Marriott, Guyana Forestry Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency ‒ none of which require the certification of the financial statements. The external auditor of these entities is the Auditor General.
“My engagement in respect of these audits is based on a set of terms of reference provided to me by the Government and is consistent with the requirements of Section 48 (2) of the Public Corporations Act 1988. The audits are managerial in nature and not directed towards a set of financial statements for the purpose of expressing an opinion on them, and the reporting relationship is to the Minister of Finance, and not to shareholders. I trust that Mr Nadir appreciates the difference, more so as he was once a member of the Public Accounts Committee.
“Mr Nadir lives next door. I invite him to a cup of tea so that we can discuss his concerns further. Mr Nadir may also wish to reflect on whether, by writing these letters criticising my involvement in the forensic audit of NICIL, he has not placed himself in a position of conflict of interest in at least two ways.”
