ICAB, NBR join hands to verify audited financial statements

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Bangladesh (ICAB) is jointly working with the National Board of Revenue (NBR) to develop a document verification system (DVS) to authenticate audited financial statements.

The step was taken to root out unscrupulous business organisations that use doctored reports to evade corporate tax, the ICAB said in a statement.

"The DVS will definitely help NBR officials authenticate audited financial statements," said Abu Hena Md Rahmatul Muneem, chairman of NBR.

"More financial information may be included in the system so that in a greater aspect, we can verify the documents," he said during a meeting between the officials of ICAB and NBR at the NBR's conference room on Tuesday.

DVS is an application under which a document verification code (DVC) will be automatically generated by the system after the submission of some specific information by the auditor.

DVC is a system generated alphanumeric unique identity for audit reports and financial statements, endorsed by practising chartered accountants, the ICAB statement said.

This DVC can be viewed by government agencies, various stakeholders and regulators.

In recent times, ICAB has also noticed that financial documents/certificates endorsed by third parties that misrepresent themselves as chartered accountants misleads the regulating authorities and stakeholders.

And so, Muneem has urged the concerned officials to develop the system as a financial database, which would be a national asset to be used by different regulators.

He also advised that the ICAB should consider the legal challenges of implementing the DVS.

ICAB developed the DVS, ensuring data security and confidentiality for the clients, said Muhammad Farooq, ICAB president.

It will be made mandatory for all practising chartered accountants to register with the DVS portal and to generate document verification certificates.

Otherwise, audit reports and financial statements signed by them would not be accepted by the regulators and other stakeholders.

Noncompliance with the DVS will be penalised by ICAB, he added.

The DVS is an upgrade of the existing Digital Identification of Audit Reports (DIAR) system, said Muhammed Forkan Uddin, vice president of ICAB.