Making a strong plea to entrust the audit of Indian corporates' books by Indian accounting firms, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) President G Ramaswamy said this carried the benefit of preventing massive fraud.

It is time to entrust the audit of Indian corporates with the Indian accountant firms, Ramaswamy told reporters here, rather than foreign audit companies.

This would prevent "deficient audits and financial statements of companies enabling massive accounting fraud to go undetected for several years" as in the Satyam case, he said.

On the delay of taking action against chartered accountants registered with ICAI, who audited the Satyam Computer service, Ramaswamy said the US securities and Exchange Commission has slapped USD 17.5 million fine on Satyam, Pricewaterhouse (PW) and Lovelock and Lewis.

Stressing on the need for confering more powers to ICAI to avert large scale corporate scandals in future, he said a special disciplinary committee has been constituted this year exclusively for dealing with the Satyam case and it would complete the hearing on a fast track mode.

Remarkable progress has been made in the cases, where the court has not stayed the proceedings, he said.

Ramaswamy said certain changes in the disciplinary mechanism of the ICAI are on the anvil to award appropriate punishment to erring members of the institute.