KPMG Australia’s whistleblower crisis has drawn two of the country’s largest law firms into an increasingly awkward parliamentary examination of corporate investigations, client privilege and the gap between an investigation’s description and its actual scope.
Documents released by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services have sharpened scrutiny of work performed for KPMG by Ashurst and Allens in connection with allegations that confidential client information was accessed and shared within KPMG’s audit business.
KPMG has acknowledged that its original internal investigation did not have the necessary rigour. It has also confirmed that conduct matters raised by the whistleblower included the inappropriate internal sharing of client information—matters that earlier investigations had not substantiated.
For Ashurst and Allens, the key question is what KPMG instructed them to do.
Ashurst’s role has attracted particular attention because KPMG’s earlier public description of the firm’s involvement sat uncomfortably with Ashurst’s evidence to Parliament.
In its 29 May statement, KPMG said that, following its internal investigation, it had appointed an external legal firm to review that work, saying that the external review supported the internal investigation’s conclusions.
But at the committee’s June hearing, Ashurst made an important distinction. Partner Jane Harvey said the firm had “never [been] engaged...
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