Auditing Profession Amendment Bill published

The Auditing Profession Amendment Bill [B2-2020], tabled last week in Parliament and only recently published seeks to strengthen the governance of the Independent Regulatory Board of Auditors (Irba) and its ‘investigating and disciplinary processes’, reports Pam Saxby for CompliNEWS. To that end, the Bill includes measures for addressing conflicts of interest; and empowers the investigating committee to authorise an Irba official to enter and search premises or subpoena any person with information required to complete an investigation. This is according to a memorandum on the Bill’s objects, which also refers to provisions authorising ‘a disciplinary panel to subpoena a person to appear before it for the purposes of a disciplinary hearing’.

With that in mind, given the number of disciplinary cases handled by the Irba’s ‘overburdened’ and apparently rather small disciplinary committee as it is now constituted, the Bill seeks to allow the board to appoint ‘as many members’ as it believes necessary to facilitate establishing from among them one panel per case. ‘Importantly, it is proposed that the decision of a panel ... (should be) regarded as a decision of the disciplinary committee.’ This is expected to speed up the processing of cases requiring disciplinary hearings. The Bill also provides for the Irba to refer a matter brought against a registered auditor to an accredited professional body for investigation; and to take the necessary steps to ‘ensure the protection of personal information in its possession or under its control’.