The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has revoked the registration for a firm for failing to file an annual report or pay its annual fee for 2011 and ordered the firm to pay a $5,000 penalty.
The PCAOB said that Paul Gaynes of the firm Gaynes & Stein in Plainview, N.Y., had failed to file annual reports for 2010 and 2011, in violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and failed to pay his annual fee for 2011. He also failed to respond to an Order Instituting Disciplinary Proceedings from the PCAOB by the Sept. 16, 2011 deadline. The PCAOB chief hearing officer issued an initial decision sanctioning Gaynes’ registration with the PCAOB in November and the PCAOB issued a notice of finality of the initial decision in early January. The
Contacted at his firm, Gaynes indicated he had turned over his SEC audit work to other auditors until the matter is resolved.
“By the time we got it [the order], we didn’t want to fight with them,” he said. “I turned over the SEC [work] to other people, and I recommended [clients] to other people. Maybe we’ll get it straightened out in a year or two.”
In December 2010, the PCAOB said that Gaynes had sent its registration staff an email saying that his firm “need[ed] real guidance on filing the annual report," and said he would telephone the PCAOB registration staff to obtain guidance. However, despite failing to file his annual report for 2010, he had issued audit reports on the financial statements of four broker-dealers in February 2011 and failed to pay the annual registration fee by July.
The PCAOB has recently been given expanded authority to inspect auditors of broker-dealers under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.
