According to Arkadiusz Lenkiewicz’s analysis, Ceramika Artystyczna „Spółdzielnia Rękodzieła Artystycznego” does not set aside the required funds for future employee benefits (such as retirement and disability severance payments and jubilee awards) and does not check each year how much it should allocate for this purpose. As a result, these costs are not visible in the financial documents, and income is not reduced. Consequently, the cooperative appears profitable—but if these costs were taken into account, it would turn out to have incurred losses every year.
“Given the size of this item (PLN 16.2 million—editor’s note), it can be assumed that, because these provisions are not recognized, the company appears to report an annual profit, whereas with the proper approach these would be annual losses,” confirms the analysis Tomasz Swaczyna, president of the Instytut Analiz i Ekspertyz Gospodarczych. “The likely consequence would be that no payments could be made to cooperative members, which would certainly attract their attention and prompt them to verify the matter and ask the management why this was happening,” says the court-appointed expert.
More than PLN 16,000,800 in missing provisions for employee benefits
After examining Ceramika Artystyczna’s books in March 2026, the statutory auditor clearly summarized her review by issuing a qualified opinion.
“The cooperative does not create provisions for anticipated liabilities to employees arising from retirement and disability severance payments and jubilee awards, which it is required to create under Article 39(2) of the Accounting Act,” Janina Gołygowska of FABER AUDYT states in the audit summary. “The present value of liabilities for employee benefits, estimated by an actuary, amounts to PLN 16,164,800,” Gołygowska concludes.
A qualified opinion is a signal to owners, contractors and anyone reading the documents as to what requires attention.
“When an auditor examines financial statements and has no objections, they issue an unqualified opinion—clean confirmation that the figures are reliable,” says Arkadiusz Lenkiewicz. “However, if they identify a material irregularity that the company does not want or cannot correct, as in this case, they issue a qualified opinion. This means that the statements are reliable except for the specifically indicated issue. The problem is that, if the auditor’s qualification were taken into account, Ceramika would not have the PLN 1,189,000 surplus that the General Assembly distributed on May 30, 2026, for interest on member shares, the reserve fund and the costs of servicing the General Assembly. Instead, there would be a loss of PLN 763,000. Cooperative law requires a profit as a condition for distribution. A resolution on distributing the surplus adopted when there is an actual loss could constitute grounds for it to be challenged by any cooperative member,” adds the author of the analysis.
External audit or notification to the prosecutor’s office?
On his website, Arkadiusz Lenkiewicz asks in his summary: when and how will the employee-benefit provision be resolved? Its amount increases year by year. In the author’s view, recognizing the employee-benefit provision may be a painful decision, but it would affect the company only once and end years of uncertainty. Equity would then fall from PLN 24.9 million to PLN 12 million, the result would show a loss, but the “auditor’s qualification” would disappear from the documents forever.
“To actually determine whether the accounting at Ceramika Artystyczna is being conducted properly and whether what is shown in the statements reflects the entity’s economic and financial situation, an external audit should be commissioned,” Swaczyna adds. “Of course, another route, if irregularities in management or accounting were suspected, could be intervention by the authorities, for example the prosecutor’s office, if appropriate proceedings were initiated, followed by commissioning such an audit opinion from a court-appointed expert,” the expert explains.
The full analysis and other topics related to Ceramika Artystyczna are available at arkadiuszlenkiewicz.pl