In the Senate on Tuesday (24 March), senator Deborah O’Neill aired allegations of misconduct from a KPMG whistleblower relating to the firm’s audit independence, misuse of confidential information and tender integrity failures.
O’Neill said the allegations, which concerned major KPMG clients including Lendlease, Westpac and Macquarie, had originated from a former KPMG employee that had approached her following multiple attempts to escalate the matter with KPMG higher-ups and ASIC.
“The whistleblower goes on to detail their efforts to escalate their disclosure—which includes KPMG executives, KPMG International, including its global chairman and global general counsel, and eventually ASIC—before making this disclosure to me, a parliamentarian, in the public interest,” O’Neill said.
She added that she had “taken great care to verify via documentation the authenticity of the matters I'm putting on record here.”
According to O’Neill, the former KPMG employee first disclosed their concerns in May 2024 under statutory whistleblower protections. Following this, they alleged that no independent investigation of the substance of their concerns was commenced, the disclosure was recharacterised as a “workplace grievance,” and adverse action was taken against them.
In a joint statement, KPMG Australia chair Martin Sheppard and CEO Andrew Yates refuted these claims. Noting that they were aware of the “serious allegations” made by the former employee in 2024, they said that external...
Schubert Jonckheer & Kolbe LLP advises Humana Inc. (NYSE: HUM) investors that the firm is investigating potential legal claims arising from alleged false and misleading statements about the co...