ACCA members have voiced their concern at millionsbeing lost through various self-aggrandizement exercises at the Association. None have been able to get their letters published in the offocial magazine. AABA provides a list of the waste. Please send us more.
 

• Each glossy self-congratulatory letter from the President costs £70,000, something which could be used to develop better services, or keep fees down.

• ACCA members have not been told that the leadership’s bungled name change attempt from ACCA to ACPA cost us £500,000. The Privy Council rejected the application.

•  Since 1997, the ACCA has been facing a £32 million lawsuit in Malaysia for plagiarism of tax exam papers. This amounts to more than £500 per member. In the 1997 accounts, ACCA’s net assets were only £9 million. By any measure, the amounts are material. Despite the requirements of SSAP 18, the 1997 accounts were silent. The official magazine and the President's glossy letter has also been silent.

• ACCA members have not been told that they will bear 28% of the total annual cost of around £5 million of operating the new UK regulatory structures. ACCA members could pay as much £25 per person per year. The system is primarily a response to audit failures by major firms. CIMA will contribute a maximum of only £38,000 per annum. Any bets that the leadership would massage the 1998 accounts? Some costs are bound to be hidden in advertising, PR, staff salaries and other headings.

•   Without any direct mandate from members, the ACCA leadership spent around £300,000 (more than the last year’s subscription increase) on a hostile take-over of CIPFA and CIMA. The leadership’s tactics generated bad feelings against the Association.

•  The Officeholders annually spend more than £50,000 to take their spouses and friends to overseas trips. Unlike, the policies of many other professional bodies such costs are charged to the Association. Despite the accounting standard on ‘related party transactions’ (FRS8), the accounts remain silent.

• ACCA President, the Deputy-President and the Vice-President are not directly elected and thus not directly accountable to members.

• ACCA is now the only UK-based major accountancy body that does not admit its members to any part of its Council meetings and/or give them any access to the minutes and agenda papers. We do not know what the Council is planning to do.

• Contrary to the specimen ‘delegated proxy form’ approved by the members and reproduced in the Rulebook, the leadership pre-prints its name on the form. As a result, ACCA Presidents cast around 20-25% of all the votes. Most of the Council is “appointed” rather than elected. The  “appointed” Council members cannot afford to call the leadership to account. The leadership (which has included Freemasons) prefers to use the system to “appoint” its friends.

•  Council members and Officeholders come and go. They are all part-time. The relatively permanent and the most powerful person in the Association is its Chief Executive. Unlike other professional bodies (e.g. the ICAEW), ACCA Chief executive is not a member of the body. We have no say in his/her appointment. ACCA members are not entitled to vote on his/her remuneration.

•  ACCA annual subscriptions increases are already running at 2-3 times the rate of inflation. Many members also pay additional fees. Unlike companies, the ACCA finance raising demands are never accompanied by any formal plan, budget or forecast. Where does the extra money go?

 
? Following complaints from members in public practice, ACCA has been forced to undertake an ‘ethnicity’ survey by the Commission for Racial Equality. The Council has excluded students (tomorrow’s members) from this exercise. Why is the leadership reluctant to develop policies to help members disadvantaged by age, gender, disability or ethnicity discrimination?
 
 

Recently, Her Majesty the Queen instructed the Lord Chancellor to intervene in the internal affairs of the Association. A retired member of the Association is suing the Association for violation of his human rights. The Strasbourg-based European Court for Human Rights has accepted the case.