AADB calls for power to conduct its own investigations

The profession’s disciplinary body wants the power to undertake its own preliminary investigations, after claiming it would have been ‘helpful’ on some occasions to have had more information when assessing whether to take cases on.

Cameron Scott, executive counsel for the Accountancy & Actuarial Discipline Board (AADB), said more power would enable the AADB to better assess if it should take on cases.

‘On one or two occasions it would have been helpful to have had more information available,’ Scott told Accountancy Age.

Currently the AADB can accept or reject potential cases flagged up to it by the accounting institutes.

However, the initial investigatory work is undertaken by the institutes themselves, and the AADB wants the right to decide whether further work is required and then do the work itself.

The accounting institutes, under the auspices of the CCAB, are working with the AADB to agree on a revision of the way the body works after it lost the Mayflower case last year, costing it £1m.

Scott said: ‘It’s designed to make sure we have enough info to say “yes we’ll investigate it”, to make sure we don’t take cases on needlessly.’

However the institutes are understood to have been rebuffed in calls for more information from the AADB about situations where further investigation would have made a difference.

ICAEW executive director of professional services Vernon Soare told council last week that the institutes ‘haven’t had complete agreement’ with the AADB, but he flagged up concerns that AADB investigations would preclude the institutes from taking part in a case under Companies Act rules.

An agreement between the institutes and the AADB, plus details of its new structure, are expected by the end of the year.