Audit Oversight Board sleight of hand.

Nik Hasyudeen, Chairman of the AOB, do you have the relevant experience  for the job?

En Nik Hasyudeen,

In this interview with StarBiz, you said that the Board could register Audit Firms on the very first day of operations, the 1st of April, 2010, "because a lot of groundwork had been done earlier to ensure that the firms knew the criteria for registration and could thus submit applications with the necessary information and documentation."


We ask how this was accomplished when the following three important positions under the AOB, 



1. POSITION : HEAD, INSPECTION AND INQUIRY


2. POSITION : SENIOR MANAGER, POLICY AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS & REGISTRATION


3. POSITION : SENIOR MANAGER, INSPECTION AND INQUIRY


had a closing date for applications that was dated the 1st of March, 2010?


Now, if one checks the SC website for the relevant information for the positions listed, this is what you will find:

and the links will show these instead:

The details for the positions and the application procedures are no longer available

Rest assured that Cyberspace has a much longer memory, so this link to jobs-view.blogspot, shows the full details as the SC had earlier put up for the three positions. 


The application forms themselves are 5 pages long. And of course the applicants had to include a cover letter and resume as well. 


Now, En Nik Hasyudeen, are we to believe that the positions for the managers who will do the necessary inspections and inquiries, was filled post haste after the 1st of March, 2010, the closing date, and that the appointees were able to send out the handbook for the registration and the forms to a select number of audit firms, without the Board itself, including yourself, there to ensure that the 'fit and proper' criteria was met (as you had not been appointed yet), and that all the 7 members of the board had to do on your very first day at the job, exactly one month after the applications for the managers were closed, was to approve the registrations?


We don't know how the world works in the AOB and the Securities Commission, En Nik Hasyudeen, but in the normal world that the rest of us live in, the usual process to appoint a Senior Manager who will be in charge of vital procedural and operational matters, will usually take at least a month to complete, and the applicant themselves will have to give due notice to their employers and WOULD not drop everything and walk into the AOB, ready to rumble. 


The AOB itself says that the necessary inspections and inquiries will take at least two weeks to ensure an auditor meets the 'fit and proper' criteria, so that means that the incumbents had to have been vetted, interviewed and appointed within 14 days, and they immediately got down to work on the applications and registrations for the 'selected' audit firms. That is a truly remarkable achievement by all involved. We know many government departments and private companies that will be very interested to learn how this level of efficiency and productivity is achieved by a body that has not EVEN COME INTO EXISTENCE YET!


By the way, how did the AOB pick the candidates when the law that brought the AOB into being only came to force on the 1st of April, and the Board members were also only appointed on the 1st of April?

Snapshot of the details for the position of, Senior Manager, Inspection and Inquiry, with a closing date of 1st March, 2010

En Nik Hasyudeen, do you truly have the relevant experience to be the Audit Oversight Board Chairman?