When Audit Files Are Opened Years Later
October 28, 2026
London ยท October 2026
On 27 October 2026 the Financial Reporting Council published sanctions in relation to the statutory audit of Liberty Commodities Limited for the year ended 31 March 2020. The FRC's own press notice is the public record for the facts of that outcome. What matters for this note is not a retelling of the findings. It is the calendar.
The audit work sat in 2020. The investigation was opened in 2022. The settlement decision was published in 2026. That span is ordinary in regulatory work. Audit files, working papers and the source documents behind them are often opened again years after the engagement closed, by people who were not in the room when the file was first kept.
The crack in the pavement
Complex trading groups, supply-chain finance and intercompany balances create long paper trails. When those trails later sit in front of a regulator, a successor auditor, an insolvency practitioner or a court, the practical question is simple: is the file in front of us still the one that was kept at the time?
Without a dated record of that exact file, teams argue from memory, folder names and email threads. That is a gap. Anyone in the trust, audit or recovery process who wants ambiguity can lean on it. Anyone who wants a clean handover cannot.
This is not a criticism of one firm. It is a structural point about time. The longer the gap between the work and the review, the more valuable a simple check that the document has not changed since it was recorded.
What a fingerprint on the day does
I handle business development and communications for Partisan. Partisan records a file's fingerprint without seeing or keeping the document, gives a dated receipt, and shows a file is unchanged since it was recorded.
That does not replace professional judgement, scepticism or the records themselves. It does not say whether a figure was right. It does not say when a document was first created. It only answers whether the copy you hold now still matches the copy you recorded then.
For audit packs, export files, board packs and handover folders, that is often enough. Record the file when it enters the case. Later, when a reviewer asks for the same working paper, you can show it is still the one you kept.
Where this sits with Partisan
Partisan will not inspect content and will not decide whether an audit met the standards. Those jobs belong to the professionals and the regulators. What it can do is give a careful team a dated way to keep the file trail tidy across years, without handing the document to anyone else.
If that is useful for the matters you handle, you can read more at partisangateway.com or email me at contact@charlespycraft.co.uk.
Charles Pycraft