FBI looks to CPAs to play key role in battling white-collar crime.

The CPA profession's strong reputation for upholding the highest standards of business ethics and conduct has convinced the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the AICPA could be an invaluable ally in the nation's war on white-collar crime and in restoring investor confidence to the financial markets, according to a ranking FBI official.

"The CPA's rich tradition of independence and integrity that investors, businesses and everybody else looks to led us to see if we could broaden and deepen this relationship with the AICPA," said Grant Ashley, CPA, Assistant Director in charge of the FBI Criminal Investigative Division.

"We believed we could reach the greatest number of CPAs through a joint effort," Ashley said, referring to the relationship with the AICPA. "The CPA's role in uncovering and preventing fraud cannot be underestimated."

The new joint effort was launched publicly with the premiere of "Arresting Financial Fraud: The Inside Story from the FBI," a Web cast co-sponsored by both organizations, now available on CD-ROM from www.cpa2biz.com/webcasts.

The FBI is handling a record 1,200 securities and corporate fraud cases, 156 of them representing millions or billions of dollars in losses for thousands of suffering victims. As part of the FBI's strategic overview of white-collar crime, Ashley said, his agency realized CPAs are an essential part of winning the fight.

"It was clear to me that the CPA profession is uniquely situated in the partnership - in education, in focusing and sharing information on what we're seeing and what the profession is seeing," Ashley said.

FBI and AICPA officials plan an extensive partnership in sharing training techniques, field experiences and educational resources. In addition, Ashley noted that the FBI will be calling upon CPAs in several ways - including CPAs as objective, third-party expert witnesses; CPAs as eyewitnesses; and as candidates to join the agency. In fact, 15% of the FBI's new hires are slated to be CPAs this year. Employment applications can be found at www.fbijobs.gov.

With the AICPA's help, he said, "We could probably short-circuit this problem in a couple of years." Hopefully, he added, in "three or four years" American business and investors will look back on this period as a historical anomaly.

Ashley said the nation may already be turning the corner on the scourge of billion-dollar fraud schemes, citing a slowdown in new case start-ups. He attributed the turnaround to the effects of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which, he suggested, has helped the FBI as much as it has helped auditors. "It is going to put the teeth back in what the profession can do, with basically transparent financial statements. And it's going to help in the long run putting an end to this problem. I don't see this being a significant long-term concern."

Watch for more information on the AICPA-FBI partnership in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Accountancy.