Revisorns tystnads- och anmälningsplikt : tala är silver, tiga är guld?

Sammanfattning: Swedish accountants are, amongst other laws, controlled by a couple of so called duties. One of those is the professional secrecy, which guarantees the safety of company secrets and other important information that the accountant needs to know but shouldn’t tell anybody. Since 1999 Swedish accountants also need to follow the regulations of the reporting duty. In short, this means that in some cases of suspected crime within a company, auditors are obliged to report this to the authorities. Some auditors consider these two duties to be in conflict with one another. This specific conflict is very rarely touched upon in other media than essays.A few auditors have, in case of a suspected crime with very vague evidence, gone against the law by getting rid of their client thus not having to take the risk of being sued because of violation of the professional secrecy by reporting the crime in vain. This fact, that some auditors even break the law, is reason enough to investigate why some auditors consider the two duties to be in conflict with one another.During our study, personal interviews with four auditors and two persons of authority were carried out. None of them have experienced any negative emotions about the reporting duty, but when it comes to the auditors that in fact do consider the two duties to be in conflict with one another, the opinions start to differ. Some say that it is practically impossible to get rid of a client by the above reasons without reporting the suspected crime, while others claim the opposite. A possible explanation for the different opinions regarding the two duties could be due to the fact that the regulations surrounding the reporting duty are very differently interpreted by different people. Does the law guarantee the safety of the auditor, or does it not? Is there a conflict between the two duties or not?We are of the opinion that there is absolutely a need to thoroughly investigate this topic, possibly by deciding upon which interpretation of the law is the right one. Swedish accounting organizations need to take this case more seriously than they have so far. Or could it be that they simply don’t want to?