WILLEMSTAD – A key issue in the disciplinary proceedings brought by former Ennia executive Reinald Curiel against a Deloitte accountant was whether a financial report used during civil litigation had been presented as an independent audit.
The Dutch Accountants Court has now ruled that it was not.
According to the ruling, the document prepared on behalf of Ennia and the Central Bank of Curaçao and Sint Maarten (CBCS) was an expert report prepared for one of the parties in ongoing litigation, rather than an audit report expressing an independent opinion on financial statements.
The judges emphasized that the accountant's assignment was narrowly defined. Rather than auditing financial information, the accountant was instructed to compare calculations submitted by both parties, analyze differences between their financial positions and verify arithmetic calculations.
Because of that limited scope, the court found there was no basis for Curiel's claim that the accountant should have prevented the report from being used in the Curaçao court proceedings.
The Accountants Court also noted that accountants are expected to intervene only if they become aware that their work is being misused or misrepresented in a legal proceeding. In this case, the judges found no evidence that the accountant had been alerted to concrete errors or deficiencies that would have required such intervention.
The ruling reinforces the distinction under Dutch professional standards between an independent audit report and an expert opinion prepared to support one party's position during litigation.