Die skandale in die groot boekhouer-maatskappye wêreldwyd is legio ... name soos Arthur Anderson en KPMG kom dadelik ter sprake.
Wat my verbaas is dat hierdie groot Westerse maatskappye is wat maar net nie hulle huis in orde kan kry nie.
As mens dan nog boonop kyk hoe die een na die ander Westerse bank fluks faal, wonder mens onwillekeurig wat gaan aan?
Is korrupsie ’n gegewe in die Weste, of is hierdie pure onbevoegdheid?
If you happen to be a connoisseur of accounting scandals, then the past month or so has been about as good as it gets, capped by the unfolding disaster at Olympus. On the flip side, if you are an auditor for a big accounting firm, it just got that much harder to argue that society should value your services.
The scam at Olympus was simple. The Japanese maker of cameras and endoscopes hid losses by treating them as assets. It said it had been doing so since the 1990s.
Where were the auditors? While we still don’t know the full extent of what they knew and when, just looking at who the outside auditors were is fascinating.
Olympus’s auditor in the 1990s was the Japanese affiliate of Arthur Andersen, then one of the so-called Big Five accounting firms. After Andersen collapsed in 2002, KPMG acquired its Japanese practice and took over Olympus’s audit. KPMG remained the auditor through 2009. Olympus switched to Ernst & Young later that year.
The ghosts of Andersen may still be with us. It was indicted in 2002 over its conduct as auditor for Enron. Big accounting frauds turned up later at many of its former clients – names that included WorldCom, Dynegy, Qwest, Freddie Mac and Refco.
Lekka in die Weste, waar almal vir almal lieg, en almal gee voor die leuens is die waarheid ... wat ’n gekkeparadys!!
Potemkin se Moses!
Francois Williams
Brief verkort. – Maggie