Auditor body retracts appeal

RECUSAL: BIASED’ IN SHAREMAX HEARING

- Roy Cokayne

Regulator says it withdrew the application on the advice of its legal team.

The Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors (Irba) has surprisingly withdrawn its petition to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) for leave to appeal a judgment ordering two members of the disciplinary committee hearing a case against the former auditors of the failed Sharemax investment scheme to recuse themselves because of bias.

Irba lodged its petition to the SCA for leave to appeal this judgment after Judge Jabulani Nyathi in the High Court in Pretoria dismissed the auditing regulator's application for leave to appeal his judgment in July this year.

That judgment followed the three former auditors of Sharemax applying in February 2021 for the recusal of Suren Sooklal and Horton Griffiths, two members of the disciplinary hearing committee, on the grounds of actual bias or perceived bias and for the hearing to be declared a nullity.