ICAI chief to grill auditors on Sunday

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), the apex body that regulates the profession, has been permitted to record the statements of the two jailed Price Waterhouse auditors — S Gopalakrishnan and Srinivas Talluri — on Sunday. The two are accused in the Rs 7,800 crore fraud at Satyam Computer Services Ltd. ICAI President Uttam Prakash Agarwal, along with Shantilal Daga, a central council member of the ICAI, would question the two on their role in the fraud. Gopalakrishnan and Talluri were statutory auditors for Satyam, whose founder-head, B Ramalinga Raju, confessed to cooking the company’s books for many years. Incidentally, Gopalakrishnan, who was then suspended by Price Waterhouse, continues to be a member of the ICAI Council, the apex decision-making body. While Agarwal heads the six-member high-powered ICAI committee formed on January 13 in the aftermath of the Satyam scam, Daga is one of its members. “We would question them about accounting and auditing aspects of the Satyam fraud. Whether standards were followed while auditing the accounts, along with other issues like how many people were involved,” said Agarwal, declining to give further details. The Andhra Pradesh police had arrested Gopalakrishnan and Talluri on January 24 for their alleged role in colluding with Raju to fudge the accounts. As a regulator of the auditing profession, the ICAI had sent a notice to Price Waterhouse and started proceedings against both auditors on its own accord. It had sought permission to interrogate the two in March.