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ON AUDITORS' role in combating corruption, I fully agree that auditors in India have largely remained mute witnesses to the corporate shenanigans. But the American CAs have fared no better in this respect as the unfolding earth-shaking events in the US have been revealing. Of course we cannot take a smug satisfaction from this. The point, however, is somehow for the starry-eyed Indians, while bribe is a dirty word, lobbying isn't.

And if the bigwigs in India are making money through brazen sleaze, their counterparts in the US are doing so through sophisticated means. While we must live down our reputation of being the 77th country in the index of probity, the US has no moral authority to hold the candle to us.

The FASB of the US has been a renegade. In its vain attempt to project a holier-than-thou image of itself, it has been over the years striking a defiant note vis-à-vis the accounting standards made by the IASC. Indeed, this has been the typical American behaviour vis-à-vis the various international forums. It takes the lead in promoting the WTO cause. But it is also the first to wreck it. Its dubious role in the earth summit is well known. Do our CAs lack depth? Surely one cannot assail adherence to group discipline as a meek display of lack of initiative.

The pro-Big 4 seems to be overly impressed with the American accountants' savoir-faire. Let them not forget that the same trait has landed the AOL-Time Warner marriage in dire straits what with the so-called business, particularly the brand, valuation going awry.

Also that it is not the fault of the Indian CA that he did not imbibe the concepts of derivatives, and so on — the blame for this, if any, must be laid at the doors of the regulators who did not deem it proper to introduce them in our markets till recently. And the less we talk about ESOP accounting the better.

If Indian CAs have been unethical, their American counterparts' record on the ethical front has been shocking to say the least. It was the American accountant who taught Enron to book loans as trading advance and worse still as a revenue item.

It was the American accountant who taught an American telecom major to book revenue expenses as capital expenditure. And it was a foreign consulting outfit, which tried to short-change the Indian power sector by a thinly disguised attempt to proffer as the project report, a report that had already done its round in an earlier project. A regime that countenanced the unabashed conflict of interest (auditors doubling in as consultants) cannot be held out as the role model for the Indian profession. Let it also be remembered that the foreign accounting and consulting outfits are not keen on being in India to preach good morals or to educate (yes, we know what sort of `education' they imparted to our politicians in the Dabhol power project) their Indian counterparts — their sole aim is to mulct the Indian businesses.

S. Murlidharan

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