KPMG has appointed a new chair who previously claimed leak allegations were “completely false” and described a senator’s actions in revealing the scandal as “very inappropriate and unfair”.
Michael Ebeid was appointed to lead the embattled firm on Thursday after the former chair, Martin Sheppard, resigned while under fire from a parliamentary inquiry into the firm’s ethical failings.
After the appointment, the committee released emails revealing comments Ebeid made in March. Ebeid apologised for the claims on Thursday and said he would not have made them had he known the full extent of KPMG’s shortcomings at the time.
Barbara Pocock, Greens senator and committee member, said Ebeid’s appointment showed KPMG still faced embedded ethical problems.
“It risks entrenching the very culture and leadership that need to change,” Pocock said.
“This is not the fresh start for KPMG that it attempts to be. Mr Ebeid is a part of the culture and leadership team where things have gone seriously wrong in KPMG.”
Ebeid was one of three independent board members who had overseen the firm’s investigation into a KPMG whistleblower’s allegations of leaks and other failings in the firm’s audit division.
The committee’s chair, Senator Deborah O’Neill, made the allegations public in a speech on 24 March.
The emails released on Thursday show KPMG’s deputy chair, Carmel Mortell, alerted Ebeid and his colleagues on 25 March.
Ebeid replied: “I assume Senator O’Neil [sic] made no attempt to contact KPMG...
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