Accountants’ body in legal dispute with former president

A former president of the Certified Public Accountants (CPA) institute is engaged in a High Court action with the organisation over findings of professional misconduct against him.

Tom Keane, a senior partner in Dublin accountancy firm BKRM, is seeking a court order to have the findings of a CPA disciplinary panel overturned. In judicial review proceedings, Mathias Kelly SC, for Mr Keane, said the CPA's sanctions "effectively thrashed" his client's reputation and were based on flawed procedures.

In a two-day hearing last year, the CPA’s disciplinary panel found Mr Keane had breached the organisation’s code of ethics and failed to carry out obligations to clients in relation to two separate business deals.

Complaints

The findings came on foot of complaints by several of Mr Keane’s former clients.

Mr Keane, who served as president of the CPA in 1993 and 1994, organised a consortium of investors to acquire land on Inis Mór in 2002, on which the Aran Islands Hotel was later built.

The complainants claimed Mr Keane, who later became a shareholder in the company behind the hotel, never passed on a solicitors’ letter to investors, which warned of fundamental flaws in the hotel’s building contracts.

In not passing on the letter, the CPA found Mr Keane had failed to comply with his obligations to the investors "in respect of competence, due skill, care and diligence". However, Mr Kelly claimed it was not within the gift of a solicitors' firm to compel Mr Keane to pass on a letter to its clients.

Advice

The second complaint relates to Mr Keane’s advice to several individuals in 2007 to invest in a healthcare firm

Telehealth

, while failing to disclose his own shareholding in the company.

The CPA’s disciplinary panel ruled that this had breached its own code of ethics.

Mr Kelly, however, claimed in the High Court that his client had not been acting as a financial advisor to any of the complainants in relation to the transaction and was therefore not obligated to disclose his own financial interest.

High Court president Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns, however, queried why the case had ended up in the High Court when there was an appeals channel within the CPA open to Mr Keane.

The court also heard that Mr Keane had previously been sanctioned for professional misconduct by the CPA in relation to a different matter.

The case continues today.

The CPA declined to comment to The Irish Times while the case was ongoing.