Saica charges diamond dealer’s accountant

A South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica) member, Munroe Swirsky, is accused of failing to return confidential documents to his diamond dealer former client.

According to documents seen by City Press and corroborated by highly placed sources within Saica, Swirsky is facing disciplinary charges because of a complaint laid by Erez Daleyot, an Israeli diamond dealer allegedly based in the country.

Swirsky was Daleyot’s accountant and personal financial advisor from 2014 and was also chief financial officer of eight of Daleyot’s companies, four registered in Israel, three in Belgium and only one registered in South Africa, according to the Saica charge sheet.

However, in less than a year, in 2015, Swirsky resigned but allegedly failed to return the companies’ documents, a matter that gave rise to the complaint.

The Saica charge sheet, which is mostly a copy of Daleyot’s affidavit, except for the mention of two companies that were included in the affidavit but not in the charge sheet, among other texts, also mentions that the conduct possibly contravened at least 10 provisions of Saica’s code of ethics and rules.

Swirsky was meant to appear before the public disciplinary hearing held last month but did not pitch as he was out of the country.

At the time, Swirsky’s legal representative requested a postponement of the matter after Saica claimed they had made numerous attempts to get hold of Swirsky but failed.

Though Saica documents show that the organisation did request a tracing agent to get hold of Swirsky about the charges before they announced them publicly, they claim they could not find him even at his registered address, which happens to be in the same neighbourhood as Saica.

According to the Saica source, the agent never bothered to go to the address and it “seemed the whole thing was designed to prejudice him procedurally”.

City Press has also seen an email, purportedly from the tracing agent, stating that Swirsky could not be found.

A list of questions sent to Saica related to this matter were not responded to and Swirsky, though he acknowledged receipt of the questions sent to him, also declined to comment.

City Press has also learnt from Saica documents that Swirsky’s legal representative on the matter will be Barry Roux, the advocate who represented former Paralympian sprinter Oscar Pistorius when he was tried for murder.

Roux confirmed to City Press that he would be representing Swirsky.

Attempts to get comment from Daleyot were fruitless.