Dražen Kapusta (COTRUGLI Business School, Zagreb) · Matjaž Gams (Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana) · Mario Brčić (University of Zagreb, FER) · Tali Režun (COTRUGLI Business School, Zagreb)
International Leadership Journal · April 2026 · Published by COTRUGLI Business School, Zagreb
Abstract
Artificial intelligence needs at least a minimal truth layer, and one does not yet exist. In the next three to five years, most economic transactions on the planet will not be initiated by humans but by autonomous AI agents, robots, and software systems acting under conditions that are Networked, Exponential, and Orchestrated. This paper presents the Cotrugli Ledger as the Truth and Evidence Layer that fills this gap: an accounting method designed for autonomous agent commerce, built on the Policy-Aware Co-signed Receipt Object (PAC-RO), formalized as NEO Cotruglian Triple Entry (NCTE) with Policy-Bound Triple-Entry (PBTE) recognition. Grounded in the Cotruglian tradition (1458) and the Khaldunian diagnosis of institutional decay, the paper presents a five-component governance architecture including a registry hierarchy, twin trust scores, dispute resolution, an AI autonomy framework, and a game-theoretic foundation. The research program is being validated through the Horizon Europe Vanguard AI consortium and the SI-Chain national blockchain infrastructure.
Keywords: AI governance; triple-entry accounting; autonomous agents; policy-bound receipts; verifiable credentials; asabiyyah; trust scoring; distributed ledger technology; Cotrugli