Tuesday, August 11, 2026

Coalition Letter to FTC on AI Companies Mass Destroying Books / Trump of settlements

 

Coalition Letter to FTC on AI Companies Mass Destroying Books (2026)

From a colleague in the access-to-information space… “As viral posts on social media recently flagged, leading AI companies are engaging in a “hoard-and-destroy” strategy of mass acquiring physical books, scanning them for AI training data, and then destroying the hard copies. 






In light of the alarm and outrage triggered by this practice — including the profound concerns it raises about the resulting threats to democracy — we’ve crafted a letter to the Federal Trade Commission asking the agency to open an investigation. Our request is carefully crafted to appeal to the two Republican Commissioners and grounded in conventional antitrust theory. It also avoids the risks of trying to open up copyright law. via Patrice McDermott, Director Government Information Watch Pmcdermott @ govinfowatch. net

Questions for Tax Crimes and Tax Procedure Students on Trump's "Settlement" in Trump v. IRS 

›
 I have posted my Federal Tax Procedure Book to SSRN, see here . Since it is timely, although a moving target that we sure have not heard th...
Tuesday, August 4, 2026

2026 Federal Tax Procedure Book Student and Practitioner Editions 

›
I have published to SSRN my Federal Tax Procedure Book Student and Practitioner Editions. For information on the SSRN links to download see ...
Monday, August 3, 2026

FTPB 2016 Editions Discussion of Trump v. IRS and Its Resulting Machinations 

›
I am trying to wrap up the 2026 Editions of my Federal Tax Procedure Book but the ongoing drama by DOJ’s $2.77 billion Anti-Weaponization Fu...
Wednesday, July 29, 2026

Report on CI Chief's Discussion on the State of IRS CI 

›
This entry is to alert readers to a recent article on CI. Joseph De Gregorio, Changes to IRS Disclosure Program Should Spark Compliance Chec...
Posted by at

Double Bay - Everyone has the wrong idea about my suburb. Our village is much more than you think

Everyone has the wrong idea about my suburb. Our village is much more than you think

Murray Rose Pool (formerly Redleaf Pool), Seven Shillings beach, Double Bay.BEN SYMONS


When I tell people where I live, it’s not unknown for residents in other parts of Sydney to say, “Oh, Double Bay”, in a tone of voice that suggests I’m surrounded by diamond-encrusted dowagers. And sure, this small suburb, five kilometres east of the CBD, is tucked between Darling Point and Point Piper, close to some of the richest people in Sydney and, indeed, Australia. But anyone who thinks Double Bay is just a smug little enclave supported solely by The Australian Financial Review Rich List is dead wrong.
DB, as some locals call it, actually has a village vibe. Or double village vibe, since it’s bisected by the bellowing traffic of New South Head Road. On one side (known to some of us as the “dark side”) you have the big-name businesses: a decent Woolies, Dan Murphy’s, bakery, a really good public library, massive pet supplies shop and banks. There are also several establishments dedicated to the pursuit of beauty ... via surgery.
The other side is where the harbour is. One of the nicest things you can do is take your flat white from the Bahia Cafe off Bay Street down to the park and the ferry, and watch the DB version of the passeggiata along the path that fringes the small beach. You’ll see mums with their small kids, joggers and people with dogs. Lots of dogs, ranging from hounds of the Baskervilles to various oodles and down to some that might make interesting hors d’oeuvres.
On some days the ferry disgorges middle-aged men in ironed jeans and women wearing frilly dresses, all from the Circular Quay cruise ships – a 15-minute ride away – and bound for the fancy dress and homewares shops in Transvaal Avenue. Steyne Park nearby is the sports ground for the local primary school, as well as the place where the Ascham schoolgirls play touch football. You often see parents and coaches shouting encouragement to very small children kicking very large soccer balls. If you’re hell-bent on exercise yourself, it’s easy to walk into the CBD in about 50 minutes.
When I was growing up in Sydney’s northern suburbs, Double Bay was in the mysterious east, a part of the city my family and friends never visited, a posh place where rich people lived. I had no idea I would ever live in Double Bay myself, let alone for almost 30 years. (I moved here for love, not money.)
When I arrived in 1997 the suburb felt much more stylishly European than it does now. It was a place of small shops stretching along New South Head Road and Knox Street like glittering beads on a necklace. They included Nellie Vida’s fashion boutique, the Mignon cake shop and Georges Restaurant, with its elegant and supercilious waiters; there were also the Swiss Deli, the Village Cinema, Lesley McKay’s excellent bookshop and 21 Espresso, famous for its matzo ball soup and borscht. DB has been the place of first settlement and the social centre for Sydney’s Jewish community since the 1930s: when I moved in, there were quite a few Jewish families living in our building.
All that’s changed now. In the past 20 years the population of Double Bay has undergone a huge shift. It’s now a place of young men in expensive suits and gleaming loafers without socks, of long-haired women in expensive activewear queuing outside Baker Bleu in Guilfoyle Street, of Mercs and Porsches and occasionally Lamborghinis. There are also hordes of young children, many of whose parents endure driving to private schools in Rose Bay or Bellevue Hill rather than to the local primary school – a place they would know only when required to vote.
But there is still the jewel in the crown of DB: the Murray Rose Pool, formerly known as Redleaf Pool, a great social and community asset, as was the great Olympic swimmer himself. A tide-fed harbourside enclosure on the Rose Bay side, the Murray Rose was never built for competitive swimming; unlike Bondi, you won’t find too many stalwarts braving the freezing water in winter.
The Murray Rose is a summer place and on hot days it’s packed: little kids dive-bombing off the edges into the salt water, teenagers displaying bikinis or six-packs, families with eskies, older women swathed in sun-defying kaftans, men and women of all ages reading on the nearby grass. (The pool must be one of the few places in Sydney where people prefer to read on paper rather than on screen.)
New DB isn’t all brushed steel fittings and botox and Armani; other bits of old DB remain. There’s the Golden Sheaf pub, for instance, and the bloke in the bootmakers who has been repairing shoes since pointy-toed stilettos appeared for the first time in the 1970s. Mario the barber is still there. There is still a “table of knowledge” outside 21 in Knox Street, its members often the sons of the original Mittel-European residents. And the grandchildren of the man who set up Elbon Coffee in the arcade off New South Head Road now weigh out coffee beans from Brazil, Ecuador and Guatemala. Double Bay may change as more high-rise appears, but we’re not going anywhere.
Jacqueline Kent is a writer of biography. Her most recent book is Inconvenient Women.


Parramatta development
  • Opinion

My suburb is a global city, an overnight success story 30 years in the making

It’s agile, progressive, on the cultural frontline and changing before our eyes: what’s more, you can feel the pride of the people who call Parramatta home.
General view at Cronulla Point.
  • Opinion

Thirty years in my suburb, and I’m no longer seen as a giant panda; I’m a local

We have the longest continuous stretch of beach inside the city limits, and you can even get there by train.



Posted by at

Franchising frauds

 The rise of million-dollar companies with just one employee (WSJ)




Alex Tabarrok on the Economic Analysis of Crime

by  Alex Tabarrok 

I tell my Gary Becker story, why I like police more than prisons, how criminals are like children and more


The cyberattacks against the hedge funds


Company Turns AI On Art Fraud

In practical terms, that means a knowledge graph representing thousands of artworks, with billions of nodes detailing the complex relationships its algorithms have identified between them. - Didginomica

WorkersDecide.tech — Make Tech Work for Workers

“WorkersDecide.tech is the product of the AI Chaos Prevention Committee — a collection of tech workers and organizers drawn from a range of groups and organizations, including:  We assembled together because we recognized the wide range of tech employeers rolling out AI projects and mandates over the head of and without the input of their workers. 

Even worse, they have been using these initiatives as a way to attack our working conditions — instituting speedups, justifying layoffs and headcount reductions, and degrading the quality of our products. We know from our experience as organizers that workers are not helpless in the face of these initiatives — we have the tools to demand our seat at the table, and our say in how technology is implemented and deployed in our workplaces.

 We believe every employer with new technology mandates can and should be answered with organized groups of workers who can ensure we get our collective say. This project is a place for us to assemble information and resources to help take a stand. If you would like to get in touch or get involved, please reach out to us at committee@workersdecide.tech.”

AI Implementation Bingo Card Generator – Use the options below to generate printable bingo cards for your workplace AI implementation exercise.



Franchising frauds:  Fraudsters are creative. Those behind many common frauds are supporting thousands of others.  Ransomware gangs develop the tools and then other scammers themselves reach out and rip off the public.  These “franchisees” collect funds and pay the main actors a percentage.  This model is now being used for many other types of frauds. So even if one catches a scammer, it may be necessary to go upstream to really solve the problem. Or could law enforcement themselves sign up and target the main players?
 
25 scams that have worked for centuries – and still do
 
UN says that there is a drastic increase in young people being kidnapped and forced to work at scam compounds in Asia
 

Fraud Studies: Here are links to the studies I’ve written for the Better Business Bureau: puppy fraud, romance fraud; BEC fraud, sweepstakes/lottery fraud,  tech support fraud, romance fraud money mules, crooked movers, government imposters, online vehicle sale scams, rental fraud, gift cards,  free trial offer frauds,  job scams,  online shopping fraud,  fake check fraud and crypto scams
 
Fraud News Around the world

Humor

FTC and CFPB

Business Email compromise fraud 

Artificial Intelligence

  •  

Benefit Theft

Scam Compounds

Bitcoin and Crypto Fraud

  •  

Ransomware and data breaches

  •  

IRS and tax fraud

  •  

ATM Skimming                                                       

Jamaica and Lottery Fraud

Romance Fraud and Sextortion 

Posted by at

Monday, August 10, 2026

Ashurst - Michael Ebeid’s last-ditch effort to save KPMG, and himself

KPMG general counsel, HR chief quit ahead of Senate probe

Two KPMG executives who were part of the firm’s botched response to a whistleblower’s allegations of misconduct in its audit division are exiting the firm, as it tries to clean house ahead of a parliamentary inquiry on Friday.
General counsel Louise Capon and human resources boss Dorothy Hisgrove finalised a lengthy negotiating process of their exits with the firm’s board on Tuesday. The pair had been under heavy pressure to resign from the broader partnership and staff since at least mid-June, as internal anger over how the firm treated the whistleblower grew.

Michael Ebeid’s last-ditch effort to save KPMG, and himself

The timing of the wannabe chair’s mea culpa suggests he’s sorry he got caught, rather than being sorry for what he did

If there was any doubt remaining that the vibes aren’t good at KPMG ahead of a parliamentary committee hearing into the audit misconduct scandal engulfing the firm, proof arrived in Labor senator Deborah O’Neill’s inbox on Saturday morning.
It came in the form of a grovelling apology from KPMG’s chair-designate, Michael Ebeid, for an email he sent KPMG deputy chair Carmel Mortell in March. In it, he had accused O’Neill of making “completely false” statements when she read out a whistleblower’s (since substantiated) allegations of the misconduct and suggested her conduct was “very inappropriate and unfair”.
Michael Ebeid, the KPMG board’s pick as its new independent chairman, doesn’t seem like one for timely apologies. Bryan Cook
Cue Saturday’s apology, which was (nearly) without qualification. The original email had been “naive, embarrassing and wrong on every level”. He was “writing to sincerely apologise” and thank O’Neill for her help in uncovering the wrongdoing (no mention of the fact he had been part of KPMG’s attempts to keep it hidden).
But the thing is, this apology email – which was published by the parliamentary committee investigating KPMG on Monday afternoon – is it was only sent on Saturday. More than four months after the original was sent, and more than five weeks after the committee published that one. Ebeid acknowledges this, saying he is “sorry it has taken me this long”.
The more pertinent timing seems to be the fact that Ebeid and other KPMG past and current executives face another shellacking by O’Neill and her committee on Friday. The last hearing in June went so terribly for the firm that Ebeid’s predecessor Martin Sheppard resigned soon afterwards.
It certainly takes the shine off how genuine Ebeid’s mea culpa seems. Rather than being sorry for what he said, which he could have told O’Neill months ago, he seems instead sorry that he is finally going to have to face questions about it.

Indeed, he even lets slip that he is preparing for that, writing that he only realised he had “actually never apologised to [O’Neill] directly” when preparing for the hearing. He had instead issued a statement through the committee when it released the email, and it started getting media coverage, which says a lot about priorities.
It’s understandable he’d be dreading Friday. O’Neill isn’t the only one set to take him to task. Greens senator Barbara Pocock previously said his nomination as KPMG chair in July was “hard to take seriously”, given his role in the firm’s botched response to the allegations, while Labor’s Tania Lawrence accused him of consistently “protecting the institution over the truth”.
He didn’t shower himself in glory in his last stint giving evidence, either. He was the only one of KPMG’s four past and present independent directors to give evidence who even partly defended the firm’s disastrous attempt to claim professional privilege over documents. He also seemingly forgot he was supposed to have oversight of Allens’ investigations into the allegations, emailing the committee over the lunch break to correct his evidence to align with the firm line.
There’s also a second element to the timing of Ebeid’s weekend epiphany. The vote on whether to amend KPMG’s partnership agreement to allow for an independent chair for its board and to then appoint him to that role is under way.
To say it’s been a rocky road to reach this point is nearly as much of an understatement as Ebeid saying his offer to essentially lobby O’Neill on KPMG’s behalf was merely “inappropriate”, as he claimed in Saturday’s apology email.
There has been a concentrated push by certain partners against Ebeid’s appointment, given his earlier role in the firm’s mismanagement of the whistleblower’s claims. This worsened with revelations by this publication over the limitations in Allens’ investigations into the misconduct, as Ebeid is on the board subcommittee responsible for these probes.
Then in late July, Allens discovered the most serious of the allegations, namely that since-sacked audit partner Eileen Hoggett had stored confidential Lendlease board papersin her locker and shared them with colleagues to win audit contracts, was true. Partners told us it made Ebeid’s role untenable. On a firm-wide partner call about the finding, chief economist Brendan Rynne even openly asked chief executive John Sams whether Ebeid would be dumped as chairman.
Ebeid has until the vote closes on Wednesday to get the partners on-side. Current consensus is that he will be elected, but more out of a lack of alternatives and a desire from partners to appear united before the hearing than true support.
Whether he lasts after Friday is another question entirely.
 is a Rear Window columnist, based in the Melbourne newsroom. Send Hannah tips securely on hannahwootton.04 on encrypted messaging platform Signal. Connect with Hannah on Twitter. Email Hannah at hannah.wootton@afr.com

KPMG’s half-hearted disclosures skewed Ashurst review of misconduct

KPMG withheld crucial information from Ashurst as the law firm conducted a review related to allegations of misconduct in the accounting firm’s audit division, leading the lawyers to dismiss the whistleblower’s right to claim legal protection.

A report authored by Ashurst in May last year said KPMG had told the law firm that the whistleblower had only provided “high-level information” about the allegations. This prompted Ashurst to find that he had not provided sufficient detail for his claims to qualify as protected disclosures.

The KPMG head office in Barangaroo, Sydney. The firm has been in crisis for weeks, after it dismissed whistleblower claims about wrongdoing that it ultimately said were true. Natalie Boog

In reality, however, KPMG already had enough information from the whistleblower to undertake an investigation into the allegations and to recommend partners be fined for misconduct in relation to them soon after.

Ashurst based its assessment solely on “file notes of discussion between KPMG and [the whistleblower]”, an email where the whistleblower threatened to disclose the claims to authorities, and the assurance that an internal probe concluded the allegations were “false and misleading”.

The Ashurst report, and findings about the same matter by lawyers at Allens in December, were published on Monday by a parliamentary committee examining the matter. The Allens report was also focused on whether the whistleblower was entitled to legal protection regarding certain disclosures.


The committee said that it realised “the seriousness of its decision to publish these documents”, as KPMG had claimed legal privilege over them, and that it did “not do so lightly”.

“However, it is necessary to enable a public examination of both KPMG’s response to the serious allegations made by the whistleblower and KPMG’s characterisation of that response in statements to this committee, its clients and the Australian public,” it said.

The committee added that it had “provided KPMG with every opportunity to publish the documents itself”, but the firm had “chosen not to”.

Ashurst’s lawyers were not told that six months earlier, in November 2024, KPMG had secretly accessed the whistleblower’s computer at least twice and downloaded documents detailing more than 15 separate complaints involving multiple named clients.

That information was detailed enough to allow an internal disciplinary panel at the firm to issue fines to three partners for misusing confidential information provided by Lendlease.

KPMG’s reliance on law firms to provide legal cover and to avoid investigating whistleblower complaints is at the heart of the scandal which has claimed much of its leadership over the past month.

The former employee agreed to leave the firm on the understanding that his claims would be properly investigated, but they were dismissed instead.

The firm launched a comprehensive investigation after the allegations – that partners had accessed the confidential files of clients for inappropriate reasons – were raised by Labor senator Deborah O’Neill in March.

The reports show that KPMG provided such limited information to Ashurst that the law firm concluded that the firm could not investigate the whistleblower’s claims due to a lack of detail, and accepted that the auditing giant had reviewed the allegations and found them to be false.

Ashurst lawyers wrote that there would be no “easy way to finalise this matter and put an end to [the whistleblower’s] incessant communications”.

The Ashurst report dated May last year is one of five that KPMG commissioned into aspects of the whistleblower’s complaints.

The report commissioned by Allens and provided in December, meanwhile, advised KPMG that while most of the disclosures it reviewed would not qualify for protection under whistleblower laws, there was “some risk that a court may find that at least some” would. The lawyers said that even if this were the case, KPMG had not breached those protections.

Another report provided by Ashurst treated the complaints as a workplace complaint and concluded “no further action is required by KPMG”, while an yet another review flagged that aspects of the most serious allegation, relating to the use of Lendlease information, may have been true.

RELATED
Michelle Hinchliffe was a former KPMG audit partner but now sits on several boards, including at Macquarie and BHP.

KPMG hearing to investigate Macquarie, Westpac audit contracts

Confused, compromised, in chaos: Inside KPMG’s Telstra-Optus breach

Find out the inside scoop about Accenture, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PwC and McKinsey. Sign up to our weekly Professional Life newsletter.

 leads our coverage of the professional services sector. He is based in our Sydney newsroom.Email Edmund at edmundtadros@afr.com.au
 is a Rear Window columnist, based in the Melbourne newsroom. Send Hannah tips securely on hannahwootton.04 on encrypted messaging platform Signal. Connect with Hannah on Twitter. Email Hannahat hannah.wootton@afr.


registered-breach-pixel

Law firm Allens cleared KPMG partners of whistleblower allegations before reckoning

Allens’ scant investigation of whistleblower allegations included brief interviews with former KPMG partners the law firm described as ‘credible and candid’.
CLIONA O'DOWD
Eileen Hoggett, Martin Sheppard and Paul Rogers.
Eileen Hoggett, Martin Sheppard and Paul Rogers.
    Law firm Allens held just two 30-minute interviews with former KPMG partners Eileen Hoggett and Paul Rogers as part of its investigation into whistleblower allegations it later found to be unsubstantiated.
    Allens’ 61-page final report into the allegations, codenamed Project Magenta, was released by a parliamentary committee on Monday.
    The report details the law firm’s scant investigation into the damning allegations, which included that KPMG’s Lendlease audit team took confidential Lendlease board papers and shared them with colleagues to help with Westpac and Dexus audits.
    Ms Hoggett, who was sacked by KPMG last month, was the lead audit partner on the Lendlease account and lead partner on the Dexus tender, while Mr Rogers was also an audit partner on Lendlease and helped prepare the Dexus audit tender.
    Following the brief interviews with Ms Hoggett and Mr Rogers, as well as a single 30-minute interview with Westpac lead audit partner Kim Lawry, Allens found the KPMG partners to be “candid and credible”.
    “Mr Rogers and Ms Hoggett, as the primary individuals able to access Lendlease board papers, admitted sharing on screen certain documents described below and denied circulating documents in printed form or via electronic channels,” Allens wrote in its report.
    “Given this, and given their credibility, we have assessed it to be disproportionate and unnecessary to attempt to undertake a review of mailboxes and other communications channels to seek to prove whether Lendlease board papers were communicated via email or some other channel that might leave a record of the circulation.”
    Ms Hoggett was sacked from KPMG in July after it was found she did take board documents, stored them in her locker and shared them with colleagues in a bid to win more audit contracts.
    The audit giant has faced a public reckoning in recent months over allegations its senior audit staff misused confidential client documents to win work. The allegations were first aired by Senator Deborah O’Neill in March this year.
    The scandal has claimed the scalps of KPMG’s leadership and partners, including chairman Martin Sheppard, chief executive Andrew Yates, head of audit Julian McPherson, Mr Rogers and Ms Lawry, as well as Ms Hoggett who was former chief operating officer.
    All up, Allens could not substantiate 10 claims the whistleblower made.
    Among the allegations were that KPMG partners covertly recorded confidential conversations, including discussions with Telstra’s group financial controller, and circulated the recordings internally; that advisory partners shared confidential, market-sensitive information with audit teams during live audit tenders; and that members of the Optus audit team were present in the bid room when KPMG was pitching for Telstra. 
    “They were actively leveraged to provide intelligence, including detailed insights into the Optus audit approach, data analytics routines, sector-specific challenges, operating models, and business rhythms,” the whistleblower alleged, according to the Allens report.
    KPMG will face further public scrutiny from the parliamentary joint committee on August 14.

    KPMG’s chairman-elect Michael Ebeid has issued a grovelling apology for dismissing allegations from a whistleblower that have rocked the consultancy as he fights to win his job on a permanent basis.

    And in a bigger issue for the consultancy, documents released by parliament on Monday showed that two major law firms that reviewed the whistleblower’s claims early in the saga failed to take basic steps, such as interviewing people involved or checking staff emails.

    KPMG’s incoming chairman Michael Ebeid issued a grovelling apology to Senator Deborah O’Neill.GETTY IMAGES

    But in March, Ebeid had emailed his colleagues on the KPMG board accusing Labor’s Senator Deborah O’Neill of airing “completely false” allegations when she read out the whistleblower’s claims that top staff at the firm had misused confidential client information. Those allegations have since been substantiated.

    Ebeid, who has essentially been functioning as the chairman of the firm that is trying to recover from its top executives’ misuse of clients’ confidential audit documents, needs to get the backing of KPMG partners in a vote that concludes on Wednesday.

    On Monday, documents released by O’Neill’s parliamentary committee, which is investigating the scandal, revealed Ebeid’s personal apology to O’Neill for the March email.

    “What I wrote was wrong,” Ebeid told O’Neill on Saturday, according to one document. “I described statements about the whistleblower’s allegations made by you to the Senate as false. I described the firm’s process as thorough. Events since have shown that neither was true, and that the concerns you raised on the whistleblower’s behalf have helped uncover serious wrongdoing and I can only thank you for that.”

    He said he thought he was being helpful, based on his knowledge at the time. “However, with what I know now, my email was naive, embarrassing and wrong on every level,” Ebeid wrote.

    And in a fresh issue for the embattled firm, the committee also released documents that KPMG had battled to keep hidden under claims of legal professional privilege. The committee said it was in the public interest to release these documents ahead of another public grilling this Friday.


    The legal documents were the reports from two law firms, Allens and Ashurst, and relate to their work on the whistleblower complaints. KPMG had initially used the reports from the law firms to claim that the whistleblower’s complaints were unsubstantiated while refusing to make the actual documents public.

    A fresh investigation by Allens has led to a purge of KPMG’s most senior people as some of the most serious allegations have now been substantiated.

    “The Ashurst and Allens processes were central to the claim that KPMG had undertaken comprehensive internal and external investigations prior to the speech given by Senator Deborah O’Neill on 24 March 2026,” the committee – chaired by O’Neill – said in a statement.

    It said the committee had found there was a “compelling public interest” in examining the results of the law firms’ investigations at its next hearing, allowing it to publish the previously legally privileged documents.

    KPMG’s new chief executive John Sams told partners that the parliamentary committee informed the firm of its intentions to publish the documents on Friday.


    “We acknowledged the Committee’s role and the importance of scrutiny and transparency, while noting that the reports reflect a point in time and do not correctly represent the current status of the investigations,” he said.

    One of the documents was a report submitted to KPMG in December last year by Allens that said all the whistleblower’s allegations were unsubstantiated.

    This includes the claim that KPMG’s Lendlease audit team stole confidential board papers and shared them internally to help win multimillion-dollar external audit tenders for Westpac and Dexus.

    Given the credibility of the KPMG executives involved, Allens said it was “disproportionate and unnecessary” to search staff emails to check what they had said was correct.

    A subsequent investigation by Allens confirmed that senior partners had illicitly accessed sensitive Lendlease board documents and kept them in a work locker, and led to the immediate expulsion of former chief operating officer Eileen Hoggett.


    Another document released was an Ashurst report from February last year. At the committee’s public hearing last month the law firm described its work for KPMG as legal advice.

    This report also cleared KPMG personnel of any wrongdoing “based on the material reviewed”, but the report contained a significant caveat. “In coming to these conclusions we have not had the benefit of speaking directly to any of the individuals concerned and assessing their credibility,” Ashurst’s lawyers wrote.

    Ashurst and Allens, two of Australia’s largest law firms, declined to comment.

    Since May, the firm has lost its chief executive Andrew Yates, chairman Martin Sheppard, and Hoggett after she lied the board documents.

    KPMG audit partner Kim Lawry also resigned from her senior roles last month after Westpac requested that she be removed from its audit “to ensure there is no distraction”.


    KPMG independent board member Patty Akopiantz quietly left the firm’s regional board last month, following former NSW premier Mike Baird’s exit in September, and fellow independent director Jane Hemstritch is expected to resign once replacements have been found.


    Posted by at
    Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)