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New In-House Counsel Duties Under SAS 99

BY Marc Kaplan
December 01, 2003

In its continuing effort to respond to high profile fraudulent financial reporting and to strengthen safeguards against fraud and the misappropriation of funds, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) has issued Statement on Auditing Standards 99: Consideration of Fraud in a Financial Statement. Generally known as SAS 99, the new standard imposes additional requirements on the audit process and applies to audits of 2003 financial statements for both public and private companies. As in-house corporate counsel, you can be affected by this new measure in several ways, most notably in the information you may be required to gather and the questions you may be expected to answer. In addition, certain information gathered under SAS 99 can help public companies meet requirements imposed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Deeper Involvement in the Audit Process

SAS 99 may well increase your involvement in the audit process. It requires that auditors perform several new procedures to gather more information relating to the risk of fraud, plus a significant increase in the documentation requirements imposed on auditors. The new standard spreads a wider net, involving more departments and employees at more levels in the organization. In an important change prompted by high-level misdeeds, SAS 99 presumes that improper revenue recognition is a fraud risk and requires procedures to guard against management override of controls. Overall, SAS 99 emphasizes professional skepticism in a way that is likely to involve you more than its predecessors did.

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