Professional secrecy and duty of discretion

Source: IEC

Every external auditor and tax consultant and those they are responsible for have an obligation to maintain professional secrecy.

What does this secrecy cover?

Everything that is learnt while exercising our profession or pursuant to this:

• all your written or oral confidences,
• correspondence,
• telephone conversations,
• notes exchanged
• correspondence sent to third parties in the context of the mandate granted.

What doesn't professional secrecy cover?

Professional secrecy does not cover public information such as published annual accounts or the deeds of a legal entity published in the Moniteur belge (Belgian official journal).

Exceptions

There are exceptions to the obligation resulting from professional secrecy, subject to criminal liability on the basis of Article 458 of the Criminal Code:

• when the auditor or the tax consultant is summoned to testify before a judge;
• when they are obliged by law to pass on data (e.g. the anti-money laundering mechanism);
• when exercising their rights of defence in disciplinary, criminal and civil cases.

In this context...
among other obligations, external auditors and tax consultants are obliged by law to pass on to the CTIF (Belgian Financial Intelligence Processing Unit) all the facts noted while exercising their professional activity which they know or suspect to be linked to money laundering or terrorist financing and to inform this body if additional questions are asked, otherwise they are liable to penalties.

More in general...
all auditors or tax consultants, irrespective of their status, are, in their capacity of members of the Institute, obliged to observe the duty of professional discretion which includes keeping secret data which are explicitly or implicitly entrusted to them in their capacity as auditors and/or tax consultants and confidential facts which they themselves have noted while exercising their profession.