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23 Nov 2005
A chartered accountant has been disqualified from acting as a director for six years following an investigation by the Department of Trade and Industry.
Christopher Gordon Coulter from Waterlooville, Hampshire had been a director of a manufacturing company in the county, but was forced to resign from the post when he was found to also be acting as its auditor.
Coulter continued acting as the company accountant, involved in preparing accounts and arranging an external audit, but it was discovered that he had instead forged the signature of the independent auditor on records filed at Companies House.
The DTI was alerted to the case after the audit firm discovered what had happened and complained. Coulter has since admitted to the forgery. He has already been the subject of an ICAEW disciplinary hearing relating to the incident, being severely reprimanded and ordered to pay fines of £4,000.
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Forged audit signature
This happened to me some years ago. I only found out at the liquidation meeting when it was announced that I had signed off the audit a few weeks before the company failed.
I had been dealing with the client's audit and they doctored a draft set of accounts I had sent them together with a list of data required to clear up the going concern issue.
I managed to convince the liquidator that I had not signed the accounts and reported it immediately to ICAEW and Companies House, neither of whom seemed at all concerned and suggested that, if I felt offended I should take the company to Court. Very helpful when the company was being liquidated.
I then realised that this could be a very widely-practised scam which would only come to light if the supposed auditor knew that their name had been taken in vain. How are they to know that in the normal run of things?
All a company has to do is pick the name of a registered auditor who is not immediately local, but not so far away as to be suspicious, type in their name on the audit report and put a few squiggles above thae name. Who would ever find out? Companies House do not have specimen signatures of Registered Auditors so that accounts can be checked, even on a sample basis.
Dodgy companies could be getting away with this wholesale.
Posted by: John Davis, 30 Nov 2005 | 00:00