Pres­i­dent of the In­sti­tute of Char­tered Ac­coun­tants of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ICATT), Derek Mo­hammed, says the role of the au­di­tor is not to de­tect fraud but to "ex­press an opin­ion on the fi­nan­cial state­ment."ICATT was es­tab­lished by an Act of Par­lia­ment in 1970 and has a mem­ber­ship of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,200 ac­tive mem­bers who are sub­ject to "an eth­i­cal code of in­tegri­ty, ob­jec­tiv­i­ty, pro­fes­sion­al com­pe­tence, con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and pro­fes­sion­al be­hav­iour."

Mo­hammed's state­ment comes on the heels of Tues­day's tes­ti­mo­ny of Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers' (PwC), Ter­ti­to­ry Se­nior Part­ner, Col­in Wharfe, at the Eleventh Ev­i­dence Hear­ing of the Sir An­tho­ny Col­man Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the col­lapse of CL Fi­nan­cial and the Hin­du Cred­it Union (HCU), where Wharfe stat­ed cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly, dur­ing his tes­ti­mo­ny, that "busi­ness fail­ure doesn't equate au­dit fail­ure."

Mo­hammed said: "Peo­ple need to un­der­stand that our role as au­di­tors is to ex­press an opin­ion on the fi­nan­cial state­ments and dis­clo­sures made on the fi­nan­cial state­ments."

He ex­plained that the role and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of the au­di­tor, with­in the con­text of an ad­her­ence to gen­er­al­ly ac­cept­ed au­dit­ing stan­dards and in com­pli­ance with the In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Re­port­ing Stan­dards (IFRS), is to de­sign ap­pro­pri­ate au­dit­ing pro­ce­dures for risk as­sess­ment and to test the ef­fec­tive­ness of in­ter­nal con­trols and sub­stan­tive au­dit pro­ce­dures to af­ford a rea­son­able ba­sis of an opin­ion re­gard­ing the fi­nan­cial state­ments.

"When you con­duct an au­dit you de­sign pro­ce­dures on an au­di­tor's judg­ment. You are mak­ing an as­sess­ment based on pro­fes­sion­al judg­ment of where there will be risk. All these pro­ce­dures are based on sam­ple test­ing. It is im­pos­si­ble to test one hun­dred per­cent," Mo­hammed said. "Pro­fes­sion­al judg­ment," he added, "is based on ex­pe­ri­ence and in­dus­try knowl­edge."

Chair­man of Aegis Busi­ness So­lu­tions Ltd and an au­di­tor for the last four decades, An­gela Lee Loy, agreed with Mo­hammed."Our role is to re­view the sys­tem and ex­am­ine that there are enough con­trols to re­flect a true and fair view of the fi­nan­cial af­fairs of the com­pa­ny. We are not go­ing in there to find fraud. We come up with an as­sess­ment based on our sam­pling, judg­ment and risk con­trols."