Internal audit

As per the Revised Guidance Note on Independence of Auditors issued by the Council of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

Self-review threats, which occur when during a review of any judgment or conclusion reached in a previous audit or non-audit engagement, or when a member of the audit team was previously a director or senior employee of the client. Instances where such threats come into play are (i) when an auditor having recently been a director or senior officer of the company, and (ii) when auditors perform services that are themselves subject matters of audit.

3.4.11    Many new areas of professional work have been added, e.g., Special Audit under the Statutes, Tax Audit, Concurrent Audit of Banks, Concurrent Audit of Borrowers of Financial institutions, Audit of non-corporate borrowers of banks and financial institutions, audit of stock exchange, brokers etc. The Council wishes to emphasise that the requirement of Clause (4) of Part I of the Second Schedule to the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949 is equally applicable while performing all types of attest functions by the members.

So, an auditor cannot be an internal auditor as well as perform attest functions for a Trust.