Dram Oil takes on Deloitte for failing to file defence

An oil trading company, Dram Oil and Trading Limited, is asking an Accra High Court to allow it prove why it should be paid more than $187,595,000 by auditing firm, Deloitte and Touche.

The company argues that it deserves the payment because the audit firm failed to respond to a suit filed against it.

Documents filed in court and sighted by JoyNews indicate that the issue originated from a commercial dispute that occurred in 2013 between Dram Oil and commercial bank, Cal Bank.

The dispute ended up in court with Dram Oil obtaining a favorable judgement.

The court additionally made consequential orders for the appointment of an audit firm to “audit the books, records and inventory of the 7th Defendant relating to the subject-matter suit particularly with respect to payments, receivables, emergency cargo under recoveries received by the 7th Defendant under the Tripartite Agreement”.

Deloitte and Touche is said to have been tasked to undertake this audit in May 2018 after the initial auditing firm had failed to do so.

Documents arising from the Court proceedings which are believed to have determined the relevant facts relating to the dispute are said to have been made available to Deloitte and Touche.

Dram Oil, however, alleges that the report submitted by the audit firm showed it had relied on “irrelevant, misleading and egregiously defective fictions that it called “assumptions”, which the Defendant knew or ought to have known were not true or reliable since the Defendant had no reasonable basis to believe same to be true or reliable, all of which were wrongful and constitutes professional negligence”.

In view of this, Dram Oil argues that the audit firm ended up making findings and conclusions that were contrary to facts established by the court in its favour, hence, the decision to initiate the legal action.

“Plaintiff avers that the actions of the Defendant were grievously unprofessional and negligent, same breached the duty of care which Defendant owed to the Plaintiff and violated basic but fundamental tenets
applicable to the audit profession as contained in the International Standard on Related Services (ISRS) 4400 and the Institute of Chartered Accountants Ghana’s Code of Ethics…”

Dram Oil has since filed a fresh application through its lawyers, Lex Premier Associates represented by Gaspar Lyle Nii-Aponsah, that Deloitte has failed to file a response within the stipulated time.

They pointed out that the lawyers for the auditing firm entered an appearance in the case on 2nd June 2022.

Source: myjoyonline