Surgutneftegaz - with $2 billion net
profit last year and on-going dispute with its shareholders about
dividends - wants to sack "Rosexperitza", a respectable Russian
accountancy, and hire "Aval", a little known accounting outfit. Aval
does not even make it to the list of 200 largest accounting firms in
Russia, according to Renaissance Capital, an investment bank.
Other Russian managers are genuinely alarmed by the vertiginous
decline in the reputation of the global accounting firms and by the
inherent conflict of interest between consulting and audit jobs
performed by the same entity. Sviazinvest, a holding and telecom
company, hired Accenture on top of - some say instead of - Andersen
Consulting.
A decade of achievements in fostering transparency, better corporate
governance, and more realistic accounting in central and eastern
Europe - may well evaporate in the wake of Enron and other scandals.
The forces of reaction and corruption in these nether lands - greedy
managers, venal bureaucrats, and anti-reformists - all seized the
opportunity to reverse what was hitherto considered an irreversible
trend towards Western standards. This, in turn, is likely to deter
investors and retard the progress towards a more efficient market
economy.
The Big Six accounting firms were among the first to establish a
presence in Russia.
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