KPMG and Siemens In Bed – Hate To Say I Told You So –
It was inevitable that it would come to this. Will KPMG now resign, since they are no longer independent or will someone have to fire them?
Last Update: 12:50 AM ET May 4, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Investigators hired by Siemens AG to probe corruption at the German conglomerate have told the company that KPMG Germany, Siemens’s longtime auditor, didn’t do enough to flag improprieties in recent years, according to a media report Friday. Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, the New York law firm overseeing the probe, told Siemens’s supervisory board last week the engineering giant’s compliance department failed to report suspicious activity to the board, The Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition, citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter. See Wall Street Journal story (subscription required). But Debevoise also took aim at KPMG’s German affiliate for not pursuing signs of wrongdoing more aggressively, The Journal said. “KPMG is a focus of the (Debevoise) investigation,” The Journal said it was told by a person who attended the board meeting. German prosecutors have also been investigating whether KPMG Germany ignored questionable payments on Siemens’s books, The Journal said. Prosecutors suspect employees at Siemens funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into slush funds over several years to bribe potential customers, according to the report.
You can get free access to that Wall Street Journal article with a netpass from http://www.congoo.com – that was on television last week