KPMG Australia’s two most senior executives have been warned by a powerful parliamentary committee that their handling of whistleblower allegations is now under formal scrutiny.
Federal Labor Senator Deborah O’Neill, who chairs the Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services, issued the warning in a letter to KPMG’s chief executive Andrew Yates and chairman Martin Sheppard six days after she used parliamentary privilege to allege the firm had used confidential client information to win audit contracts worth tens of millions of dollars, including those of banking giant Westpac and property group Dexus.
The warning comes as the committee prepares to launch a formal inquiry into the whistleblower allegations. That inquiry could have wider implications for Australia’s Big Four accounting firms – KPMG, Deloitte, PwC and EY – whose operations have been the subject of intense parliamentary and regulatory investigations in recent years.
Central to the committee’s concerns will be whether employees inside the Big Four’s closed partnership structures enjoy meaningful protection when and if they choose to blow the whistle on corporate wrongdoing. It will likely increase the pressure on the Albanese government to strengthen corporate whistleblower protections.
In a speech to the Senate on March 24, O’Neill relayed a series of damning allegations made to her by a former senior KPMG executive. She told the Senate each allegation was supported by documentation she had taken a...
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