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The US audit regulator has fined the Dutch arms of Deloitte, PwC and EY a total of $8.5mn after finding “hundreds” of staff cheated on internal training exams including ethics tests, in the latest such scandal at the Big Four accounting firms.
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board said staff, partners and even some members of the firms’ senior leadership had improperly shared answers or otherwise collaborated on the tests, which are needed to satisfy internal training and professional education requirements.
The enforcement actions come after KPMG Netherlands last year paid $25mn for improper answer-sharing by hundreds of staff, including its head of assurance, and for misleading regulators about the practice.
The PCAOB said it found cheating on tests that were designed to ensure staff were up to date on audit and accounting standards and understood professional ethical requirements, with the conduct persisting from at least 2018 to 2022. The firms said punishments for individuals ranged from written warnings to firings.
At Deloitte Netherlands, the PCAOB said that “a member of the firm’s executive board serving as the firm’s chief quality officer resigned in October 2023 after the firm discovered that he had received the answers to a mandatory test shortly before taking the test”.
A PwC Netherlands partner had also stepped down from “a senior leadership role after the firm discovered that the partner and another colleague had met together while taking a mandatory test”, the PCAOB said.
US regulators began uncovering widespread test cheating at the Big Four in 2019, but it was years before many firms implemented policies aimed at stamping out the practice, according to the PCAOB filings.
It has now found instances at all of the Big Four firms and across the world, from the US to the UK and China, levying tens of millions of dollars of fines.
“The PCAOB will not allow impaired ethics to threaten the integrity of our capital markets,” its chair Erica Williams said in a statement.
The three Dutch firms fined on Wednesday were given credit, the agency said, for recent policies making it clearer to staff what is expected of them, as well as the firms’ co-operation with its investigation.
The Dutch audit regulator will also impose a supervision programme for monitoring the three firms’ compliance and “exploring further appropriate changes to firm culture”.
PwC and Deloitte would pay civil penalties of $3mn, while EY would pay $2.5mn, the PCAOB said.
EY Netherlands said it had taken “extensive actions to reinforce our culture of compliance, ethics and integrity”, while Deloitte said it had taken “appropriate disciplinary measures” and would work with the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets to implement changes.
PwC Netherlands said it had imposed a range of sanctions on those found to be involved, including written warnings, financial penalties, demotions and exits from the firm. “This undermines public trust in the organisation,” said Chris Buijink, chair of the firm’s supervisory board. “We must learn from this.”
