8 former US KPMG partners indicted

This New York Times story carries details of indictments presented against 8 former partners of the US branch of KPMG accountants (a separate firm from KPMG Australia) together with an outside lawyer.

The indictments allege not only that the accused conspired to defraud the government by advising clients to enter fraudulent tax shelters and preparing tax returns to conceal them but also that they concealed information from investigators.

The article says "According to the indictment, one defendant, Mr. Eischeid, gave "false,
misleading and evasive" testimony to the I.R.S. in 2002 about certain
tax shelters. The indictment cited an e-mail message from one KPMG
partner who wrote that the firm’s general counsel and outside lawyer
"determined that the best strategy was ‘the less said the better.’ " As
a result, the e-mail message continued, "the record will reflect
repeated ‘I don’t knows,’ ‘I don’t recalls,’ and ‘I was out of the
loops’ – the rope-a-dope/Enron defense."

A federal judge has approved a US$456 million (AUD 606 million) settlement between KPMG and the
Justice Department that allows the firm to avoid a criminal indictment.

UPDATE 18 July 2007: Washington Post reports that a federal judge has tossed out indictments against 13 former KPMG
executives in the government’s largest criminal tax-fraud
case ever, citing "intolerable" prosecutorial abuses that deprived the
officials of their constitutional right to a defense.

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