SA Express

Hold Harmless Letter

By signing the hold harmless letter we would have been expected to rely on the information. The issue was about audit and the Deloitte work was accounting. There was a serious conflation of the two issues. Accounting and auditing. Our disclaimer had nothing to with accounting. It had to do with a lack of audit evidence to support the accounting issues. I believed at the time that if we obtained the work of Delloitte there would have been such a debate over the accounting issues that the audit issues would have been lost in the debate. It seems that is happening now that IRBA want us to believe that by relying on the work of Deloitte we would have not qualified. That is so far from the truth. By relying on the work of Deloitte would have changed absolutely nothing regarding the audit report. Other than the emphasis of matter might have been discarded. Which is not a material issue in context. There are audit standards which I will find precluding an auditor from relying on work that has been disclaimed. So according to the standards we also had no choice if we wanted to rely on the Deloitte work If this was about simply wanting to see what Deloitte had done for a sake outside the scope of the audit, just to see what they were thinking – I would not have had any hesitation in signing. But the stakes were too high. The minute Nkonki had sight of the Deloitte work there would have been extreme pressure for us to rely on that work contrary to the audit evidence.