Media Centre

RE: Partnership between ICAN And Forensics and Compliance Institute (FCI)

Dear members,

The attention of the Council has been drawn to a mail posted on Yahoo group mail by Mr. Nathaniel Cole, FCA titled, “ICAN COUNCIL BREACH OF CONTRACT?” in which he made unethical comments, baseless and unsubstantiated allegations, threats of legal actions against the Institute’s  and in particular, the Council and Management staff.

Without seeking to join issues with its arrant member when there exists a statutory procedure for handling such unprofessional conduct, the Council will like, for the benefit of members who have had to support or criticise Mr. Cole’s modus operandi and the use of this forum to feather his nest, to state as follows:

1.      The Forensic Accounting certification was not conceived by Mr. Cole for the Institute. He was invited, as a member, to help develop materials for an initiative that the Council decided on in 2001 when the Faculties were first launched. Given the nature of the assignment, the Council did not consider it expedient to request that such assistance should be rendered pro bono.

2.      Accordingly, the Institute signed a contract with Forensic Compliance Institute (Mr. Cole’s organisation) to jointly run its Forensic Accounting Certification Programme in January 2009.  The contract provided that FCI will develop the materials and the training will be jointly run for ICAN members and members of other IFAC-recognised professional bodies in or outside Nigeria. The materials were to be jointly owned.

3.      For the series of training programmes jointly run by both bodies in 2009, Mr. Cole was handsomely paid over ten million Naira (N10m).

4.      Unfortunately, as the designated Technical Director of the programme, he has continued to use the seminar platform to disparage the activities and question the integrity of officers of the Institute without justification. To ensure that the programme continued without any hitch, the Board of the Audit, Investigations and Forensic Accounting Faculty met with him on August 7, 2009 to address all his fears and observations. Responsibilities of ICAN staff and FCI were revisited and agreed. It is not on record that he formally complained of any failure of the Secretariat to discharge its responsibilities.

5.      Driven by his personal interests and his ultimate goal of metamorphosing into a Forensic Accounting Institute in Nigeria (FCI has recently registered with CAC), Mr. Cole’s FCI advertised its own independent Forensic Certification programme in the Guardian of October 15, 2009 for the period October 23-24, 2009. Contrary to our agreement, FCI’s certification programme was open not only to all persons interested in Forensic Accounting certification including Bodies not recognised by IFAC, he added the by-line that he was the Technical Director of ICAN-FCI to add credibility and pass it off as a joint programme without recourse to ICAN. Besides, FCI’s programmes were scheduled not only for the same venue being used by ICAN-FCI and facilitated by the same ICAN resource persons at Mr. Cole’s instance, but also the fees which he proposed and agreed with Faculty Board were discounted to undermine the spirit of the contract.

6.      Following the advert by FCI, he was invited to a meeting by the Adhoc Committee set up by the Council to discuss the issue on October 19, 2009. He declined the invitation on grounds that the notice was too short and that it should be rescheduled to a date after his advertised seminar. After much persuasion, a date before the seminar was agreed. At that meeting held on October 22, 2009 which was chaired by the ICAN Vice President, all efforts to get him to cancel the programme failed as he claimed to have expended a lot of funds to prepare for the seminar. The Adhoc Committee deferred to him but advised that subsequent seminars on Forensic Accounting should be discontinued, a request he stoutly rejected. He insisted that he would continue to organise more seminars for any person interested in Forensic Accounting in Nigeria. A new date(October 30, 2009) was jointly agreed to reconsider the matter. He failed to attend the Adhoc Committee’s meeting as he claimed to be out of Lagos on personal business.

7.       To make good his threat, he advertised another FCI Forensic Certification training programme in the Guardian of December 8, 2009 in which he also described himself as the Technical Director of ICAN-FCI Forensic Certification Training Programme. The training was scheduled for December 16-17, 2009.  

8.      To ensure that the matter was amicably resolved or if need be, agree to appoint an arbitrator as specified in the agreement, the President personally stepped into the matter and invited him to a meeting on November 9, 2009 which he declined to honour. In his regret mail to the Registrar/Chief Executive, he said, “I will suggest that in the future, it would be better or even expected that you should please first confirm with me my availability before setting up the date and time for such a meeting i.e. if my presence is needed. Therefore, in order to avoid future scheduling conflict my advice is to confirm my availability before setting any meeting with me as you are well aware that I have my personal business commitments that require my presence and attention either here in Nigeria or overseas…. Please when rescheduling the meeting, bear in mind that I need to know who exactly will be present at the meeting and more importantly, the agenda for the meeting must be provided. You will agree with me that this is what is expected in a professional setting as ours. I am sure you will be able to provide this necessary information before the rescheduled meeting”. As a fellow of the Institute, a higher standard of conduct is expected of him.

9.      The Council was constrained to formally rescind the contract since he had frustrated its implementation. This was communicated to him (FCI) on January 6, 2010 through all his known addresses in Nigeria and USA and by email, which he consistently failed to acknowledge or respond to. Subsequently, A disclaimer to this effect has been placed on the Institute’s website.

10.  The Council will not condone the unprofessional conduct of any member irrespective of his position because of unbridled commercial interests and therefore, the full weight of the Institute’s disciplinary processes will be brought to bear on this matter. Integrity, our hallmark, cannot be sacrificed at the altar of pecuniary benefits. The task of building an enviable and enduring professional institute is the task of all its members.  The Institute’s enabling Act clearly forbids members from exhibiting conducts that can bring the Institute to disrepute as has been demonstrated by Mr. Cole in this case. We will defend the ICAN Act to restore the desired sanity.

O.A.ADEPATE, B.Sc, MBA, FCA

REGISTRAR/CHIEF EXECUTIVE

THE INSTITUTE OF CHARTERED ACCOUNTANTS OF NIGERIA