Deregistration does not save accountants from arrests

The dismissal from the register of chartered accountants and also from the list of auditors does not lead to the revocation of the precautionary measure of house arrest against the professional. This was emphasised by the Court of Cassation with sentence 5049 of the Third Criminal Section, rejecting the appeal by the defence of a professional investigated for criminal conspiracy aimed at committing a series of tax offences such as the undue compensation of taxes with non-existent credits.

Among the grounds of appeal, the defence had emphasised the double cancellation from the Register and List, highlighting how membership of the Order of Chartered Accountants was a decisive condition for the realisation of the fraud contested. In its absence, the risk of repetition would in fact be non-existent.

Of a different opinion is the conclusion of the Supreme Court of Cassation, which first of all recalls the marked criminal tendency of the commercialist, his 'unscrupulous professionalism' in carrying out, in a far from occasional manner, a plurality of transactions to the detriment of the Treasury. This element confirms the concreteness of the danger.

As for reiteration, the deletion "while formally preventing the repetition (moreover of only some) of the criminal conduct whose execution presupposes a given professional veste, it certainly does not constitute, however, an obstacle which is difficult to overcome for the suspect to use his technical knowledge, already in the past subservient tocrime, for illicit purposes, obviously leaving aside the possession of such knowledge from the formal membership of a professional Register".