The State's corporate enforcer has secured its first conviction against a company director for falsifying its financial statements.
Before Dublin District Court today, Gary Anderson, 5A Nun's Cross, Ashford, Co Wicklow, pleaded guilty to falsifying the financial statements of Crest Interiors Ltd., a company of which he was a director and secretary.
The accounts in question related to the financial year ended July 31st 2003. The Court heard Anderson presented the financial statements and another document to the company's bank for the purpose of renewing an overdraft facility.
However, the documents incorrectly represented to the bank that the financial statements had been audited by a chartered accountant's firm based in Walkinstown, Dublin 12.
The company was not a client of the audit firm and that firm denied the authenticity of the presented documents.
Ms Justice Anne Watkin fined Anderson €500 and ordered him to pay costs of €300.
In a statement, Director of Corporate Enforcement Paul Appleby said this was the first prosecution taken by the office for this offence.
"We were particularly anxious in this case to uphold the integrity of audited financial statements. An auditor's opinion provides valuable independent assurance for the public at large of the state of affairs of a company," he said.
"We cannot tolerate a director representing a set of financial statements as having been audited by a recognised firm of auditors when this was not the case. "We remain anxious to widen the type of company law offences which we prosecute, and subject to existing resource constraints, we will continue to advance our enforcement efforts in 2006."