دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی سوء ظن تعهدات گزارش پولشویی: پذیرش حسابرس، و یا ناتوانی برای تعامل؟ - الزویر 2018

ABSTRACT

Money laundering has become of increasing concern to law makers in recent years, principally because of its associations with terrorism. Recent legislative changes in the United Kingdom mean that auditors risk becoming state law enforcement agents in the private sector. We examine this legislation from the perspective of the changing nature of the relationship between auditors and the state, and the surveillant assemblage within which this is located. Auditors are statutorily obliged to file Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) into an online database, ELMER, but without much guidance regarding how suspicion is determined. Criminal rather than civil or regulatory sanctions apply to auditors’ instances of non-compliance. This paper evaluates the surveillance implications of the legislation for auditors through lenses developed in the accounting and sociological literature by Brivot and Gendron, Neu and Heincke, Deleuze and Guattari, and Haggerty and Ericson. It finds that auditors are generating information flows which are subsequently reassembled into discrete and virtual ‘data doubles’to be captured and utilised by authorised third parties for unknown purposes. The paper proposes that the surveillant assemblage has extended into the space of the auditor-client relationship, but this extension remains inhibited as a result of auditors’ relatively weak level of engagement in providing SARs, thereby pointing to a degree of resistance in professional service firms regarding the deployment of regulation that compromises the foundations of this relationship.

5. Conclusion

As this paper has discussed, at first glance the extension of auditor reporting obligations under POCA 2002 reflects an evolving rhizoid surveillance assemblage comparable to that described in sociological literature by Deleuze and Guattari (1987), Deleuze and Foucault (1977), Haggerty and Ericson (2000), and Giddens (1990). The concern has arisen that data mining of ELMER by ‘authorised end users’ may result in the information filed by auditors emerging in entirely different and unforeseen locations and juridical contexts, for example in tax evasion court proceedings against a client or disputed welfare claims, or in police prosecutions. The ongoing compilation of ELMER evidences elements of the architecture of the surveillant state described by Lyon (1994), Nock (1993), Gordon (1987), and, of course, Orwell (1949); auditors now file information through SARs which then becomes available to unknown users and for unpredictable uses. If a client is notified by third parties with access to ELMER of pending investigations which only information known to the auditor could have triggered, then they will know (or suspect) that the auditor provided the information, without authorisation or notification. Consequently, the trust and confidentiality implicit in the professional relationship risks being compromised. The link between money laundering and terrorist activity is, and will remain, of concern to legislators, and POCA 2002 represents an attempt to dissuade auditors, through fear of criminal sanction, from participation in processes and structures which make these crimes possible (Davis, 2003). However, in practical terms, the reporting regime ushered in by the Act has significant shortcomings. The technology underpinning the regime received significant criticism in the Proceeds of Crime Report issued by the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, Fifth Report of Session 2016–17: ‘To repair the damage to the reputation of the SARs regime caused by the failure of ELMER, we recommend that the Government involves those who actually use the SARs system to make reports- as well as those charged with investigating at the other end- in designing the replacement to ELMER. Only by doing so can the Government rebuild industry’s trust in the regime and ensure that the next generation of SARs does not suffer the same fate’.