All the accounting firms signing off on dubious financials MUST be fined heavily or even jailed. Accounting was not just my bachelor degree's major, I also did bloody Honours classes in them. Its boring like hell but important as well. It is a man made system of keeping track of data... seemingly simple but oh so important. In a capitalistic society where there are investors, owners, minority shareholders, regulators, ... so many facets of society who have to rely on the validity, integrity and authenticity of these numbers. Failing which, the entire economic ecosystem of trust, reliability and enforcement of rules and regulations (of those financials) breaks down.
Just look at the pictorial below, all the asset movements, valuations, justifications, collaterals for loans, asset valuations, asset disposals, veracity of figures, actual audit trail of assets and cash flows, etc... ALL required the reliance on verified figures. If NO ONE CAN DEPEND on them, the whole thing breaks down!!!
a) You cannot charge hefty fees and then say "oh well, its just financials", ... because people relied on it, investors relied on it, ratings agencies relied on them, etc...
b) If we just sign off on anything and everything WITH NO CONSEQUENCES, what kind of crap society we live in.
c) The accounting profession is a professional industry, which means, your opinion can be relied upon for making other important decisions. The hefty fees are not just to feed the bloody partners ok.
d) You cannot say "I am just an accountant".... NO, you are the very core of approval processes, gatekeeper, and policeman of financial assets/data/cash/liabilities & their VERACITY ... Decisions worth billions and billions are going to be made based on these figures (to lend, to buy, to collateralise, to sell, to invest, etc.).
e) If I know then what I know now - The defence that in light of the discovery "of new findings by DOJ etc..." now the older accounts can no longer be relied upon... does not hold up that well. DOJ was not the only one digging. Plenty of business journalists were doing the same at the time. Edge, WSJ, Sarawak Report... almost all of them were coming to the same conclusions that something is very wrong with the whole shebang then. Yes, even then.
KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 21 — Kepong MP Lim Lip Eng said action must be taken against Deloitte Malaysia for providing a falsified audit of 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
Lim said Deloitte’s then-country managing partner Datuk Tan Theng Hooi must also be made to answer as he signed off the account on behalf of Deloitte Malaysia.
“He even came to Parliament to testify before the PAC in defence of the 1MDB account, which we now know to be untrue,” he said during a press conference at the Dewan Rakyat today.
Lim pressed the Malaysian Institute of Accountants (MIA) to finally take action against the firm over this.
The MIA previously it was investigating both Deloitte and KPMG, another former 1MDB auditor that disavowed its audit following later third-party disclosures.
“My colleague (Damansara MP) Tony Pua lodged an official complaint with the institute in 2015, but until now there has been no official reply.
“I want MIA to state clearly and immediately as to what their position is on the account audited by one of its members,” he said.
Kampar MP Thomas Su, who was also present, called Deloitte’s actions indefensible and said it was imperative that the MIA take action over the deception of Parliament and the PAC.
In 2016, Deloitte stated that its audit reports for 1MDB’s financial statement for 2013-2014 should no longer be relied upon due to new information revealed by the US Department of Justice when it filed complaints in seeking to recover over RM6.8 billion in 1MDB-linked assets.
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