Deloitte under fire — sort of
One of the problems Irba could have in disciplining Deloitte is that most of the fraud happened in Steinhoff Europe — which was audited by a German company. But did Deloitte assess that work properly?
Revelations that Steinhoff’s accounts were wrong, to the tune of at least R106bn, dating from 2009 to 2017, would appear to have put the heat firmly on its long-standing auditor, Deloitte. The watchdog body, the Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors (Irba), has told the FM that it is "considering" PwC’s findings, but it is already far advanced with its own probe. While Steinhoff investors have only seen the 11-page summary, Deloitte, it seems, has had "full and unrestricted access" to the whole 3,000-page report, which has another 12,000 pages of annexures. In February 2018 Bernard Agulhas, the CEO of Irba, began investigating what went wrong at Steinhoff from an audit perspective, using 2014 as the starting point. "[We] have already progressed [our] investigation into the audit of Steinhoff, to the point that Irba awaits the restated audited financial statements," he said. However, it seems Irba may have to reopen its probe for the simple reason that PwC has now flagged problem...
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