The exclusion of Jayendra Janardan Ved from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICEAW) extended into two disciplinary tribunal hearings published in May, with the accountant’s inaction after the first disciplinary hearing leading to his dismissal in the second hearing.
He was first hit with a severe reprimand and a £5,000 fine for not responding to a client’s letter. As a result of that decision, Ved had to comply with the tribunal’s request for information.
He failed to do this, which led to his practising certificate being withdrawn and another disciplinary tribunal hearing. At the tribunal he was excluded and ordered to pay a significantly larger fine of £15,000 and costs to the ICAEW of £12,825.
Complaint one
Ved was first pulled up in front of the ICAEW disciplinary committee in January 2021. One of his clients became unhappy with his service in 2017 after incurring an HMRC penalty and appointed a new firm of accountants instead. When she asked Ved to share with her new accountants a list of opening balances and a refund for work that he didn’t complete, she didn’t get a response to her letter.
Ved admitted that the reason he didn’t respond to the letter and the subsequent reminder a couple months later in November 2017 was because he was in dispute with this client’s new accountants. After the client was successful in the small claims court, the ICAEW investigation committee took the matter to the disciplinary tribunal in January 2021 where Ved was severely reprimanded, fined £5,000 and ordered to pay costs of £2,565.
But this is not the end of Ved’s disciplinary story. As part of his disciplinary punishment, he was told to provide information contained in the Professional Conduct Department (PCD) letter within 28 days. Ved failed to respond with the information and his practising certificate was suspended.
Complaint two
The investigation committee discovered, however, that Ved was still continuing his duties as the director of the accountancy firm.
The disciplinary committee heard how Ved emailed ICAEW on 3 March, the day after his practising certificate was withdrawn, to say that he had been “caught up with a client who has been issued with a suspension notice of their High Value Dealer licence by HMRC and have been requested to assist them to appeal against the HMRC decision”.
But this wasn’t the only evidence the investigation committee compiled which inferred that Ved was still engaged in public practice: the firm’s website described Ved as a partner as of 30 March 2021 and still listed his regular client work, while Companies House in May 2021 had Ved down as a director of the firm.
At the disciplinary hearing, the tribunal had to decide whether Ved’s conduct lacked integrity because he knew that his practising certificate had been withdrawn. The fact Ved emailed ICAEW on 3 March and alluded that he was engaging in practice, led the tribunal to assume the practitioner didn’t appreciate that he was suspended from public practice.
While that tribunal could not prove that Ved was aware between 3 March and 24 June 2021, the accountant was still liable for disciplinary action because he engaged in practice without a practising certificate.
Sanction
The tribunal ruled that the starting point for an accountant engaging in practice without a practising certificate is exclusion and a £5,000 fine. However, the tribunal considered it appropriate to deal with sanction globally rather than deal with separate sanctions for each different matter. And because Ved ought to have known that his certificate was withdrawn, his website was unchanged, and his practising certificate had been suspended following the previous tribunal's ruling, the conduct fell into the “serious category” and came with a bigger fine of £15,000.
The tribunal also pointed out that Ved had three previous disciplinary sanctions, including a reprimand and a £1,000 fine in November 2012 for not dealing with requests in a timely manner and a £3,000 fine and a severe reprimand in 2019 for not providing documents requested by the investigation committee.
So the tribunal decided that Ved’s “blatant disregard for both his professional obligations and the authority of his regulator” warranted a financial sanction of £15,000 and an exclusion. On top of that he was also ordered to pay costs of £12,825.
Alison Wood, solicitor at Blake Morgan said:
"This is another case where the member was not present at the hearing and was not represented and there is no doubt that this would have been to Mr Ved's detriment. The Disciplinary Committee (DC) did not have the benefit of hearing his position or an explanation for his conduct. By March 2022, Mr Ved had been sanctioned by the ICAEW in respect of a failure to deal with correspondence/ provide information on three occasions dating from 2012, 2019 and 2021. He had been reprimanded and then severely reprimanded on two occasions. Fines imposed had been £1,000, £3,000 and £5,000. Moreover, on the third occasion, the DC had also ordered Mr Ved to produce the outstanding information by 2 March failing which his practising certificate be suspended automatically.
"Once Mr Ved received notice of the March hearing, he should have sought immediate legal advice. He would have been warned that his position was extremely grave and that he must take all possible steps to address the outstanding issues, failing which he faced the prospect of exclusion from membership, a heavy fine , costs and publicity of name. This was because not only was he in breach of the January 2021 order, but once again he faced complaints of failing to deal with correspondence.
"Mr Ved's conduct throughout the case demonstrated a clear disregard for the regulator and a clear lack of engagement with the disciplinary process. It had been flagged as an issue that he had remained a director at Companies House of a limited company in which name he practised and he remained advertised as a director on the company's website. Yet he failed to correct these matters before his case was heard at the DC, which would have only exacerbated his position and frustrated the DC. Any member facing sanction will do well to correct any issues they can before a hearing, particularly if it is something as simple as correcting the company website.
"The case suggests that Mr Ved clearly needed his practising certificate as he had continued practising without it, and it is therefore odd that he didn't take more care to protect it, particularly when he had been subject to sanctions on previous occasions."
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