KPMG to reassess ties to the Guptas

KPMG South Africa has announced it has suspended a partner and relieved two others of their board executives as the auditing firm begins the process of reviewing their relationship with the controversial Gupta family.

Trevor Hoole, the chief executive of KPMG South Africa, said in a statement yesterday that his firm would be working with KPMG International (KPMGI) to address the issues raised by various stakeholders regarding the work previously done with companies related to the Gupta family. “Mistakes have been made and painful lessons have been learnt,” he said. The review team will be led by an experienced senior partner from the KPMG network, who will report to KPMGI’s global vice-chair of qual- ity risk and regulatory, as well as to the South African Board.

“While the last audit opinions for the group were signed for the February 28, 2015 year ends, it is now clear that based on publicly- available information, KPMG should have resigned earlier than March 2016 and should have stopped working for the Gupta companies sooner.

“In my judgement, we were too slow to recognise the wider public interest related to these matters,” the statement read.

Hoole’s admission comes after e-mails from the Gupta Leaks showed that payments had allegedly been made to the family’s Linkway Trading company and were used to cover the costs of the wedding held at Sun City in 2013. The e-mails also revealed that four local KPMG partners were guests at the wedding.