Dodgy auditing shockwaves

ACCOUNTANT’S AFFIDAVIT: INDUSTRY HAS BEEN ACCUSED OF CORRUPTION AND LYING

State capture inquiry chief investigator is problem for the commission, he adds.

An explosive affidavit by academic, columnist and chartered accountant Khaya Sithole questions the integrity of the accounting and audit profession in South Africa at the highest level andraises serious doubt about the upcoming state capture commission of inquiry.

Sithole accused the SA Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica) board of lying and covering up corruption and observed that the state capture inquiry, likely to cost upwards of R230 million, may already be discredited.

He has called for the entire Saica board to be replaced and sent shockwaves through the accounting industry, which is still reeling from the KPMG-Gupta scandal and the Steinhoff meltdown.

Saica has accused him of irregularly adding 129 students to the Thuthuka Bursary Fund (TBF), Saica’s scholarship scheme, between 2014 and 2016 when he was the programme manager. They said this “fraud” cost them more than R10 million. But he denied the claim, calling it a bid to silence him, adding that he helped to get funding of R9 million for TBF via his own networks.

Sithole has named numerous people he says added students to the bursary scheme without following due process. They include Wits vice-chancellor Adam Habib; National Students Financial Aid Scheme chairperson and Thuthuka chairperson Sizwe Nxasana; Saica executive director and Thuthuka custodian Chantyl Mulder. Saica chairperson, also Deloitte Africa’s CEO, Lwazi Bam, has said the board “distances itself from all [Sithole’s] allegations and reiterates its support for its whole leadership team”.

However, Sithole says Bam wanted to remove him as a chartered accountant before Saica’s annual general meeting on June 26 after he had written an open letter calling for the board’s removal, to ensure Sithole did not get onto the board himself.

His affidavit deals at length with the challenges of managing Saica’s bursary fund. He links the action against him, in part, to information he related to then Saica CEO and TBF trustee Terence Nombembe about a R1.2

His statements amount to an implicit bias