OREANDA-NEWS. May 5, 2008. The National Depository Center (NDC), Russia's only settlement depository servicing the full range of Russian securities, announced today that Deloitte & Touche CIS CJSC has completed an independent operational audit of NDC systems and procedures.

The objective of the study, the second such audit conducted at NDC, was to provide management with recommendations for further reductions in operational risk. The study examined the current performance of operational control procedures selected by NDC and set out recommendations for the enhancement of procedural efficiency. Implementation of the recommendations made on the basis of the previous audit, conducted a year ago, considerably raised the efficiency of NDC procedures in operating risk management and confirmed the practicality of a regular audit of the company’s control procedures by an independent auditor.

Commenting on the results, Nikolai Egorov, Director, NDC, said: “In 2008 NDC continues to implement the recommendations of Thomas Murray, the rating agency. An independent audit of NDC’s operations by a well-known auditing company allows us to confirm the efficiency of operating processes for NDC’s management bodies, partners and customers. The audit contributes to the further optimization and qualitative improvement in the technological level of operational processes, to successive monitoring of the efficiency of measures taken in order to improve the operating risk management system, and also to improvements in the corporate governance system with regard to transparency and surveillance for the internal control process based on best international practice. We have evaluated the results of the audit positively and consider the implementation of independent operating audit on a regular basis useful.”

Joanna Declercq, Partner, Deloitte & Touche CIS CJSC, added: “This is the second year when Deloitte holds operating audit of NDC. In the course of the program we evaluated whether existing control procedures of information systems and business processes supply well-grounded guarantees of implementation of internal control tasks. Recommendations on improving existing control procedures have been developed on the basis of the audit’s results. We are happy to see that NDC’s management pays serious attention to the internal control function and strives to improve business processes and to raise the reliability of its internal control system.”