Amendments were made to the Law of Georgia on Accounting, Reporting and Auditing

As a result of the amendment, the scope of obliged entities subject to the supervision of SARAS is expanded based on the objectives of the Law of Georgia on Facilitating the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing and includes accountants providing professional services and accounting firms.

Within the law, the terms ‘accountant providing professional services’ and ‘accounting firm’ are defined. The amendment serves to identify persons of significance for the purpose of facilitating money laundering and terrorist financing, for compliance with FATF recommendations and EU directives.

The law authorizes SARAS to establish requirements for continuing education for accountants providing professional services and accounting firms, in accordance with the rules established by it, in order for the obliged entities to be able to receive qualified and updated information.

According to the law, SARAS defines the procedures for maintaining the registers of accountants providing professional services and accounting firms in an electronic form, its structure, its form, a list of information provided therein, the procedures for identifying users and the rule for delegating the management of the register. As a result of maintaining the register, the persons performing accounting activities will be identified, which is a prerequisite for ensuring AML/CFT supervision and raising awareness.

In order for the existing requirements of the obliged entities defined by the Law of Georgia on Facilitating the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing to be fulfilled , the appropriate basis for the development and adoption of by-laws by SARAS has been determined.

In order to adopt International Standard Quality Management (ISQM) instead of International Standard on Quality Control (ISQC), appropriate amendments were made to the full version of the law. It is worth noting that according to the transitional provisions of the law, the authority to audit the financial statements of PIEs granted to the audit firms will be retained until the results of the monitoring of the quality control system are disclosed.

See the detailed information about the law on the following link.