(Trinidad Guardian) The disciplinary committee of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) has disciplined and fined one of its members, Ramganie Bob Gopee, for alleged misconduct, regarding a United Kingdom client. In a statement issued on Monday, the ACCA, in outlining the six allegations against Gopee, said they were all contrary to its professional conduct regulations and were pursuant to bye-law 8 (a) (i):
1. Pursuant to bye-law 8 (a) (i), Mr Gopee is guilty of withdrawing client money from a client bank account without the client’s authority;
2. guilty of misconduct by failing to deposit into separate accounts monies received from a client which were held for more than 30 days;
3. guilty of misconduct by reason of not accounting to the client for interest that accrued from surplus funds, that were transferred from the client account to an interest-earning account;
4. guilty of misconduct by reason of the firm’s client bank account being overdrawn on diverse dates;
5. guilty of misconduct by reason of allowing monies, other than clients’ monies, to be paid into a client account;
6. guilty of misconduct by reason of his failure to cooperate with the ACCA investigating officer during the course of the investigation, in that he failed to respond to correspondence and failed to provide specific documents, contrary to disciplinary regulation.
In the statement, the ACCA said: “The committee ordered that Mr Gopee should be severely reprimanded, pay a fine of £2,000, pay costs of £800 and that the decision should be published by issuing a news release to ACCA’s Web site and to the local press referring to Mr Gopee by name.”
Contacted for a comment, Ramganie Bob Gopee sent the following written response: “Further to your intervention, please note that the allegations stated by ACCA seem to exaggerate transactions involving simple transfers of money from a UK client to pay their indebtedness in Trinidad, on their behalf. “All the payments were made on time. Indeed, some were made before the agreed time.
“However, when the transfers were sent to me, they were put into a savings accounts in my name until the Trinidad creditors were due. There was never a complaint from any creditor in Trinidad about non-payment or late payment. “I was advised by ACCA that my practice was wrong and the interest earned on the account belonged to the UK principals. I since calculated the interest and remitted it to the UK principals.”
