HA&W Adds Fraud-Call Service

Atlanta (May 30, 2003) -- In an effort to aid clients in complying with certain Sarbanes-Oxley guidelines, Habif Arogeti & Wynne has added RightCall, a confidential 24-hour, toll-free hotline to help clients detect financial misconduct.

“Any CPE meeting I have been to has had research indicating that most fraud is detected by anonymous employees calls, more than any other internal controls in place,” said Kay Cooper, CFE and senior manager at HA&W. “We’ve been kicking around the idea of this service for a couple of years, but with the current environment it’s more of a requirement for public companies so we decided to get in gear.”

A call center submits the anonymous complaints to the litigation services group at HA&W, which in turn creates a report of the information and submit it to members of management. Companies can then choose to investigate further using HA&W’s certified fraud examiners.

Cooper claims RightCall is different from other hotline services as HA&W has people on staff to investigate claims, rather than just relay tips to a company’s audit committee.

HA&W currently is promoting RightCall in its company newsletter, as well as creating flyers and cards that feature the hotline number to be distributed to employees and posted in break rooms. The firm is among several to recently offer such services to their clients - both public and private.

Earlier this month, Rochester, N.Y.-based business consulting and accounting firm The Bonadio Group\ established a service called Sarbanes Complaint Solutions that provides audit committee complaint management and filtering in addition to a standard complaint hotline.

-- Seth Fineberg

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