ICAI Reprimands and Imposes Penalty on CA for Signing Unsigned Financial Statements:

ICAI Reprimands and Imposes Penalty on CA for Signing Unsigned Financial Statements The Disciplinary Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) has recently held a CA guilty of professional misconduct for violating the provisions of Section 134 of the Companies Act, 2013.

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The Respondent, CA Abhilesh Jha, was the statutory auditor of M/s Chang Chun Chemical India Pvt Ltd for FY 2018-2019. The Registrar of Companies (ROC), Mumbai, filed a complaint that the company had uploaded financial statements that were not signed by the directors but only the auditor, violating the provisions of Section 134(1) of the Companies Act, 2013. As per section 134 of the Companies Act, 2013, any financial statement, before submitting to the auditor, must be signed on behalf of the Board of Directors either by the chairperson of the company or by two directors, out of which one must be the managing director and the other the chief executive officer. However, in the present case, the committee noted that the respondent auditor had signed the financial statements of the company without any signature of approval from the Board, as required under Section 134 of the Companies Act. The respondent submitted that he was unaware that the statements uploaded on MCA were unsigned. He claimed that he did not upload the documents; those were uploaded by the company. As per the respondent, he was conducting assignments in a professional manner, but he did not know about the extra diligence needed in such an assignment at that time.

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The Disciplinary Committee concluded that the respondent had failed to comply with section 134 of the Companies Act, 2013, and the violation was established. Therefore, CA Abhilesh Jha, the respondent, was held guilty of Professional Misconduct under Item (7) of Part I of the Second Schedule to the Chartered Accountants, 1949, for which He was reprimanded and fined Rs 25,000 by the Disciplinary Committee of ICAI.