The DA has requested the Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors (IRBA) to investigate whether SAA’s auditors were delinquent in their audits of the state-owned airline’s 2014-15 and 2015-16 annual financial statements. DA deputy finance spokesman Alf Lees said on Monday that the SAA auditors had failed to qualify the "going concern" assumption contained in the SAA annual financial statements. This was despite a memorandum by Treasury to SAA directors, dated August 23, stating that the proposed R4.7bn government guarantee would not be sufficient to ensure SAA was able to continue trading until the end of the 2016-17 financial year. "Clearly if this were the case, the ‘going concern’ assumption made by the SAA directors was not appropriate, that is SAA will not be able to continue trading for a period of 12 months from the date of the SAA directors approval, being September 18 2016. This memo was dated some 37 days before the auditors signed their audit reports," Lees said. Lees sa...
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