In a recent incident of fraud unearthed at a multinational banking and financial services company in India, the internal auditor was arrested on charges of conspiring with other co-accused in deliberately failing to point out certain discrepancies. The National Company Law Tribunal added names of the internal auditors (present and former) as parties to the alleged fraud.

In another incident, in one of the biggest corporate scandals at an IT service company, the investigating agency charged the head of internal audit contending that despite being aware of the irregularities, he did not report them to the audit committee. He was found guilty of gross negligence in discharge of duties by the ICAI disciplinary committee and barred from practising as Chartered Accountant.

A former regulator remarked during a media interview recently that if there is anything wrong happening in a company, internal auditor must be the first to know; and that…