Why MPs are investigating giant corporate ‘cash cops’

Accountancy is by reputation a boring profession. We imagine a middle-aged man in a dusty office totting up figures.

This image is just how the Big Four accountancy firms like it, not least because it hides what they really are – the handmaidens of greed, graft and crony capitalism.

Deloitte, KPMG, Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers are supposed to be the guardians of good business but have become the pin-striped promoters of the worst corporate practices.

They signed off the accounts of the banks which collapsed, failed to raise the alarm over BHS and Carillion and helped firms avoid tax on an industrial scale.

If you want to know why capitalism has such a bad reputation can hire firms apparently willing to sign off accounts at the stroke of a pen and bag a lucrative consultancy contract at the same time? A PwC auditor signed off BHS’s accounts days before it was sold by Sir Philip Green after spending just two hours looking at files. An internal note suggests the worker backdated his audit and failed to gather evidence on “whether BHS was a going concern”.

Then there is Lehman Brothers, Northern Rock, HBOS – all deemed going concerns by auditors shortly before their collapse.