Aspects Regarding the Judicial Liability of Professional Accountant

Author:Lecturer Adrian Doru BÎGIOI, Ph.D.

JEL:H21, H25, G38

DOI:

Keywords:professional accountant, audit mission, responsibility, complicity, criminal liability

Abstract:
Irrespective of organizational form, the accounting profession involves an increasingly responsibility. Most professional obligations of accountants are arising under the contract for services and in practice there are situations when, for various reasons, they do not fulfill their contractual obligations or fulfill them improperly, engaging their liability. \r\nThere are several forms of liabilities, such as civil liability (which could be contractual and delictual one) and criminal liability. Based on these considerations, the author elaborated a study that analyzed the second form of responsibility, namely the penal judicial liability. To meet the objective of the research, the author has selected a sample of 63 judgments handed down by national courts which dealt with economic crimes, from a total number of 3,334 judgments. Those decisions were published by The Bucharest Court of Appeal, from 1 January 2008 to 28 February 2010, and the results show that the main breaches, for which the professional accountants were convicted of, were: complicity in tax evasion, involvement in setting up an organized criminal group, intellectual forgery, fraudulent bankruptcy, complicity in crimes on preventing and sanctioning money laundering, abuse of power, in the form of "malfeasance in office". \r\nThe results can be used for further research to determine the causes that led to these situations and to realize the importance of responsibility on accountants’ activity.\r\n\r\n

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