Robert B.M. Mul

Robert Mul (1963) is Executive Director and manages the department Profession & Society (public trust) at the Royal NBA: The Netherlands Institute of Chartered Accountants. With a staff of sixteen; the department supports more than twenty five NBA-committee’s varying from Banking to Housing associations, SMP’s, Sustainability, Fraud and Accountech. Mul personally runs the policy program ‘Sharing Knowledge’ which brings together auditors and stakeholders in economic sectors to produce so called Public Management Letters[1] (audit insights). He also represents the NBA in nationwide consultations especially regarding healthcare, public sector and Tax. And internationally at the European professional accountancy organizations and at IFAC. Mul and his wife live, and raised their three children, in Rotterdam.

Before joining the NBA in 2009, Mul was elected by the city council of Rotterdam to hold  public office as Director of the Audit Office Rotterdam in 1998, and was re-elected in 2004.  The office published reports on operational and performance audits and reviews of the financial audits as performed by the city’s audit department and a private audit firm. Formerly, Mul hold several positions at the national audit office of the Netherlands. In 1988 he graduated in political science (with honours) at the University of Amsterdam. In 1996, he received a post-academic master degree at the Netherlands School of Public Administration.  

In 2002, Mul was a co-founder and became the first president of the Dutch Society of Public Audit Offices & Public Audit Committee’s (NVRR). At his resign in 2007 he was awarded the Honorary Chair-medal. In 2003 he became vice-president of the Committee Follow-up audit Accountability which was appointed by the State Secretary for Education Mark Rutte to investigate allegations of fraud at each of the 152 institutes of vocational and higher education in the Netherlands. During 2004, he was a member of the independent guidance committee which oversaw the evaluation by the Ministry of Finance of the central government system for results oriented budgeting. Over the years, Mul published or co-published several articles and a book in English including:

• ‘Sharing knowledge: public management letters, a new way to fulfil the public role of accountants’ (WCOA, Rome, November 2014)   
• ‘Local government audit in the Netherlands’ In: Regional public sector audit institutions in Europe, a comparative study (EURORAI, 2004).
•  ‘Performance or compliance? Performance audit and public management in five countries’ (Oxford University Press, 1999).