Page 189 - Sigmaroc Annual-Report 2023

• Local laws and regulations including environmental in the jurisdictions of the subsidiary entities;
• AIM Rules for Companies;
• Health and safety laws; and
• Anti-bribery and anti-money laundering regulations.
• We designed our audit procedures to ensure the audit team considered whether there were any indications of non-compliance by the Group and Company with those laws and regulations. These procedures included, but were not limited to:
• Making enquiries of management;
• Reviewing board meeting minutes;
• Reviewing Regulatory News Service announcements;
• Ensuring adherence to the terms within the exploration permits, including environmental conditions; and
• Reviewing legal and regulatory correspondence and reviewing legal and professional fees.
• We also identified the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements due to fraud. We considered, in addition to the non-rebuttable presumption of a risk of fraud arising from management override of controls, that the potential for management bias was identified in relation to the valuation of goodwill and investments (noted in the Key audit matters section of our report) as well as the valuation of the defined benefit obligations, including the key actuarial assumptions applied. We addressed this by challenging the assumptions and judgements made by management when auditing that significant accounting estimate and ensuring that there were adequate disclosures included in the respective notes including the disclosures within critical accounting estimates.
• We addressed the risk of fraud arising from management override of controls by performing audit procedures which included, but were not limited to: testing of journals; reviewing accounting estimates for evidence of bias; and evaluating the business rationale of any significant transactions that are unusual or outside the normal course of business.
• As part of the Group audit, we have communicated with component auditors the fraud risks associated with the Group and the need for the component auditors to address the risk of fraud in their testing. To ensure that this has been completed, we have reviewed component auditor working papers in this area and obtained responses to our Group instructions from the component auditors.
Because of the inherent limitations of an audit, there is a risk that we will not detect all irregularities, including those leading to a material misstatement in the financial statements or non-compliance with regulation. This risk increases the more that compliance with a law or regulation is removed from the events and transactions reflected in the financial statements, as we will be less likely to become aware of instances of non-compliance. The risk is
also greater regarding irregularities occurring due to fraud rather than error, as fraud involves intentional concealment, forgery, collusion, omission or misrepresentation.
A further description of our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements is located on the Financial Reporting Council’s website at:
www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities
This description forms part of our auditor’s report.
USE OF OUR REPORT
This report is made solely to the Company’s members, as a body, in accordance with Chapter 3 of Part 16 of the Companies Act 2006. Our audit work has been undertaken so that we might state to the Company’s members those matters we are required to state to them in an auditor’s report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone, other than the Company and the Company's members as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.
Zahir Khaki
Senior Statutory Auditor
For and on behalf of
PKF Littlejohn LLP
Canary Wharf Statutory Auditors 15 Westferry Circus Canary Wharf London E14 4HD
17 March 2024
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