It’s been a bad week for one of the more insipid organisations occupying a pivotal role in the business sector — the SA Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica). Saica traces its roots to 1894, when the Institute of Accountants & Auditors was formed in Johannesburg with just 65 members. Since then, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s mostly been downhill.
With all manner of slippery accountants fiddling journal entries in recent times, you’d think Saica would be up to its neck in disciplinary inquiries, kicking ass and taking names, to restore faith in the profession.
Not so much.
It has taken Saica more than a year to charge Anoj Singh, Eskom’s up-to-his-neck-in-it former finance director, even though he’d been all over the Gupta-leaks more than a year ago, arranging deals to suit the Gupta family. Finally last week, long after Singh had quit Eskom, Saica said it would charge him for conducting himself in a way that was "discreditable, dishonourable, dishonest, irregular or unworthy, or which is derogatory to the Institute, or tends to bring the profession of accountancy into disrepute".
To abuse British parliamentarian Denis Healey’s evocative phrase, which dates back to the 1970s, being "disciplined" by Saica must be akin to being savaged by a dead sheep.
For some more privileged folk, even a date with a vengefully inclined sheep is unlikely. The most notorious example of this, a proud Saica member, is a former SA Revenue Service employee who got his accounting degree from Stellenbosch University in 1982: Markus Jooste.
Jooste, who himself has admitted to "mistakes" as former CEO of Steinhoff, is central to the huge hole of more than R100bn currently being investigated by 60 forensic investigators from PwC.
So what do you reckon Saica has done about Jooste? Disciplined him? Sent him a firm letter saying it doesn’t like controversy, so please stop?
Well, no. Instead, Saica’s website still lists Jooste as a member of more than three decades’ standing, having first joined in February 1986.
If you’re wondering why that is, just try getting an answer from an organisation whose attitude to transparency is, to put it politely, Panamanian. Acting CEO Fanisa Lamola, whose varied career began at Anglo American in 1995 and included a stint in the Limpopo government, didn’t return calls or messages.
One investment manager wrote to Saica in April, asking the institute why it hadn’t been "more proactive" about Jooste — even though Steinhoff itself had laid charges against him with the Hawks months ago.
An official replied that Saica is "in contact with the relevant authorities to obtain evidence".
This would appear to vindicate the fearful bashing Saica took a few weeks back from Old Mutual chair Trevor Manuel. "There is a long list of people, some of whom have been convicted and sentenced for crimes apart from malfeasance itself, and retained their membership while in prison. There is something wrong with an institution that allows life membership because it is incapable of acting," he said.
Rather than disciplining Jooste, Saica has instead been going hell for leather against one of its critics — former Wits accounting lecturer Khaya Sithole — who has called for its entire board to be fired.
Last week, Saica convened a public disciplinary into accusations that Sithole forged a signature on a document to unlawfully provide grants to 129 students.
To abuse Denis Healey’s evocative phrase, being ‘disciplined’ by Saica must be akin to being savaged by a dead sheep
— Rob Rose
Sithole denies fraud, but admits he re-used an old document and changed the dates for a letter he sent to Wits accounting students — something he admits was "completely wrong". So he may have screwed up, but it wasn’t exactly in the league of, say, causing a R210bn loss for thousands of Steinhoff investors.
In his 27-page affidavit, Sithole claims Saica’s case against him is driven by the fact that "various senior members" of the accounting body objected to his criticism and decided he "needed to be silenced".
But most remarkably, Saica has said the inquiry against Singh will not be open to the public.
When I asked Sithole why his inquiry was public, yet Singh’s disciplinary will take place behind closed doors, he was sanguine: "That’s Saica for you. They told me the disciplinary against me was to be open as it was ‘in the public interest’. But now they don’t seem to think the Singh inquiry is in the public interest."
Saica, it seems, prefers to live by the Mafia code of omerta — the code of silence that ensures not a word is breathed to the outside world. And when an insider breaks that code, all hell breaks loose.
At a time of heightened sensitivity towards accounting ethics, and the need for justice to be seen to be done, Saica’s tin ear is killing its credibility.
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