PROBE INTO THOMAS COOK AUDITS IS WIDENED

A PROBE into Thomas Cook’s audits before it collapsed with £1.7bn of debt has been expanded.

The 178-year-old package holiday operator went bust in September after rescue talks fell apart, triggering questions about why its books were signed off by accountant EY less than a year previously.

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has been examining the 2018 audit and yesterday said it was also looking at the previous year. EY took over from PwC as Thomas Cook’s auditor in 2017. Both of the accountancy firms have been criticised for failing to sound the alarm about the firm’s finances before it collapsed and the regulator has not ruled out looking at PwC’s audits as well.

The FRC did not provide an update on its probe’s findings yesterday.

The failure of Thomas Cook, which was involved in the skiing holiday industry as well as offering summer package trips, left some 600,000 holidaymakers stranded abroad, including 150,000 Brits the Government had to repatriate at taxpayers’ expense.

Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom said yesterday: ‘There are serious questions about the way in which Thomas Cook was managed and audited, and so I welcome that the FRC are going to look into the years preceding 2019.’