Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.
AIA

iSoft directors charged over misleading statements

by
12th Jan 2010
Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

Four former directors of the health sector software house iSoft have been charged with consipiracy to make misleading statements.

The Financial Services Authority announced last week that the four have been summoned to appear at the City of Westminster magitrates court on 29 January. The charges are likely to have come about as a result of iSoft’s revenue recognition practices that led to restatements in 2006 that cut nearly £200m from previous years’ reported profits.

The company was founded when Patrick Cryne, Stephen Graham and Roger Dickins engineered a buyout of the specialist health sector software wing from KPMG in 1999. The company secured lucrative contracts under the NHS’s huge IT renewal programme. Delays to the NHS technology roll-out put the company under pressure and the alleged accounting irregularities came to light in 2006 when Deloitte took over from previous auditor RSM Robson Rhodes.

Dickins, a former high level partner at KPMG, died in 2006, but Cryne and Graham have both been named in the FSA’s action along with former iSoft finance director/chief executive Timothy Whiston and finance director John Whelan. The Accountancy Investigation and Discipline Board announced it was investigating the matter in 2006, but has not yet taken action against any of the accountants involved.

Cryne issued a statement expressing disappointment at the FSA’s decision to charge him and confidence that the court will vindicate his actions.

iSoft was taken over in October 2007 by Australian company IBA Group, which renamed the firm iSOFT Group Limited and which is not implicated in the current investigation or the forthcoming court case.

Tags:

Replies (0)

Please login or register to join the discussion.

There are currently no replies, be the first to post a reply.