‘Big Four’ accountancy firm KPMG was hit with another hefty fine in the US after its employees consistently cheated during professional exams.
Authorities in the US fined KPMG’s Netherlands division US$25 million (£20 million) after hundreds of its staff swapped answers on training courses between 2017 and 2022.
US accountancy watchdog, The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, added the cheating was "egregious and widespread" while it was also "repeatedly misled" by KPMG during its investigation.
"The growth of this widespread answer sharing was enabled by the firm’s failure to take appropriate steps to monitor, investigate, and identify the potential misconduct," the regulator said.
Marc Hogeboom, the former head of assurance at KPMG's Netherlands office, has also been permanently barred by the PCAOB and was fined £120,000 for his role in the scandal.
Stephanie Hottenhuis, chief executive of KPMG in The Netherlands, commented that the PCAOB's conclusions were "damning".
"It is a hard lesson, but we are determined to learn from this," she said in a statement.
Separately, Deloitte, another of the ‘Big Four’ was fined US$2 million after affiliates in the Philippines and Indonesia also swapped answers in internal training exams.
Wilfredo Baltazar, an official at Deloitte Philippines, was sanctioned over the incident.
Accountancy exam cheating is rife in the US. In 2019, KPMG paid US$50 million to the SEC over incidences of answer sharing and manipulating tests.
In 2022, Ernst & Young, now known as EY, was fined US$100 million by the SEC, the securities regulator's largest-ever fine against an audit firm for exam cheating.