A former senior partner at Ernst & Young has accused the firm of knowingly enabling organized crime-linked gambling businesses in a sweeping federal complaint filed in the Southern District of New York.
Joe Howie, a 35-year veteran of EY and former co-leader of its Global Assurance Risk Center of Excellence, alleges the firm “knowingly permitted the Firm to provide audit and other professional services to companies, particularly in the gaming, casino, and hospitality sectors, that were controlled by or closely connected to organized crime syndicates and other criminal groups and activity.”
In the 118-page filing seen by ReadWrite, Howie states that from 2017 to 2023, EY issued “unqualified audit opinions” for a group of publicly listed casino companies despite their filings containing “material misstatements.” He claims that these companies had connections to transnational organized crime networks engaged in illicit operations worth “billions of dollars.”
Howie warned that EY’s clients were “implicated and/or involved by proxy in bribing government officials, defrauding governments, and other serious illegal acts.” Yet EY “knowingly continued their audit and other engagements without taking effective action to end these relationships or reduce the risk of audit failures.”
The complaint identifies three US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) registrants, anonymized as...
“Debunking” efforts involving police forces, community leaders and local councillors should be deployed to counter misinformation in the wake of serious incidents such as the Southport murders, ac...