The Federal Treasury plans to gain access to the servers of auditing companies

The Federal Treasury plans to gain permanent access to the servers of audit companies where the results of completed audits are stored. According to market participants, on the one hand, this can reduce the burden on market participants, on the other hand, it will increase the risks of prosecution. However, to implement the measure it is still necessary to develop software and a regulatory framework.

As Kommersant has learned, the Federal Treasury is going to introduce a new procedure for monitoring audit companies. It is planned to organize it by obtaining remote access in real time to company servers where the results of completed checks are stored, market participants explain. The innovation will affect companies inspecting socially significant organizations (see “Kommersant” dated March 1, 2023). The Federal Treasury did not respond to Kommersant’s request.

Based on the Law “On State Control…” The Federal Tax Service already uses monitoring in the supervision of tax collection, and now the Treasury hopes to apply it in the supervision of auditors, explains B1 partner Igor Buyan. So far, participation in monitoring is positioned as voluntary, since there is no regulatory framework, however, if the Treasury “strongly recommends joining,” it will be difficult to refuse, emphasizes Kommersant’s interlocutor in the market.

Auditing companies also note possible positive aspects – they expect that monitoring can replace scheduled audits of the Federal Treasury.

In this case, it may be beneficial for an audit organization to be a monitoring participant, confirms Sergei Kharitonov, managing partner of the Marillion group of companies. “A one-time audit is a big burden when it is necessary to provide huge amounts of data for verification within one to three days,” he explains. “Last year, even large audit firms paid fines for late provision of documents during audits.” In addition, the inspections themselves take up to 40 days with a team of several people, notes Rusaudit CEO Evgeny Samoilov.

Last year, the Federal Treasury strengthened control over auditors. It planned to conduct inspections of nine audit organizations from the top 10, while in 2022 – only six. It was also planned to audit 80% of audit organizations from the top 30 versus 50% in 2022 (see “Kommersant” dated September 1, 2023). In December, the Federal Treasury excluded one of the largest auditing companies, Rosexpertiza (according to RAEX, in 2022 it ranked 12th in terms of revenue from the register of audit organizations providing services to socially significant organizations; see Kommersant of January 18, 2023 of the year).

Igor Buyan, however, believes that “in the end, monitoring may turn out to be an even more serious burden than scheduled inspections.” The time of inspections is known, as is the list of documents being analyzed, he explains, in contrast to monitoring, when the Federal Treasury has the opportunity to check anything after a completed inspection and hold them accountable, including exclusion from the register at any time.

Difficulties may also arise with the implementation of the idea itself, market participants believe. The main problem in implementing monitoring may be the fact that the audit process is automated in different organizations in their own way; there is no single software product, explains Mr. Kharitonov.

Monitoring can only be implemented if the Federal Treasury and auditors have a single specialized software, confirms Mr. Samoilov. The development of such software requires significant investment and can take several years, he believes. In addition, Sergei Kharitonov clarifies, in order to carry out monitoring, a “clear and transparent regulatory framework must be created that defines the rights and responsibilities of the parties to the process.”

Yulia Poslavskaya