The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) fined a Colorado-based audit firm and its founding partner a total of $150,000 for alleged professional skepticism failures and improperly altering audit documentation.
The regulator also revoked the registration of the firm, AJ Robbins CPA, and permanently barred its managing partner and owner, Allan Jeffrie Robbins, from association with any registered public accounting firm, the PCAOB announced Thursday.
The details: Between 2016 and 2018, the firm issued multiple audit reports and interim review engagements without first obtaining concurring approval for issuance from an engagement quality reviewer, the PCAOB stated in its final decision.
Additionally, the firm allegedly failed to conduct two issuer audits with due professional care and skepticism and failed to cooperate with a PCAOB inspection in 2018.
Robbins and the firm improperly altered audit documentation and made misrepresentations to the PCAOB’s inspections staff after getting advanced notice of the inspection, according to the decision.
The firm also failed to maintain its independence from an issuer client because of a business relationship with an officer and director of that client, the PCAOB said.
“As this case demonstrates, for severe misconduct, those consequences can include both sizable civil money penalties and permanent bars and revocations,” said Robert Rice, director of the PCAOB’s Division of Enforcement and Investigations, in the regulator’s release.
The repeated violations of basic rules and standards across multiple clients and engagements demonstrated the firm’s system of quality control “did not provide reasonable assurance of compliance with applicable professional standards,” according to the PCAOB’s decision.
Reached by phone, Robbins declined to comment.
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