OK, let's get more on that from order.
Imran from DW Business.
Good to see you order.
That's really a lot of money.
Tell us more about this case against PwC.
Right.
So PwC kind of came into the spotlight when China
announced its biggest financial investigation into fraud for Evergrand, as
you said, that they had inflated their revenue by more
than $79 billion.
And so PwC signed off on that.
And so for this, they're facing a fine up to
that's like $145,000,000.
So we're talking about a lot of money and a
six month suspension.
But this lawsuit is part of a bigger effort to
recover some of the money that investors had put in
over the last few years into Evergrand after its collapse.
The biggest allegation against accounting firm is that it's signed
off on questionable numbers that are only coming to light
now.
Now, these are obviously serious allegations against a very well
known accountancy firm.
How is PwC responding to all of this?
Right.
So they're basically saying these are all false allegations.
All of these allegations actually came from a whistleblower report
earlier this year that said that PwC was involved.
So the accounting firm is saying this is not true.
We obviously did not make any of these mistakes, but
the fact really is that PwC was Evergrand's auditor for
more than 10 years, so it's hard to believe that
such big oversights could have happened without the company knowing.
And the PW CS also used to be one of
China's leading audit firms, with an impressive 110 companies under
its belt, including the Bank of China.
And ever since the scandal, fifty of those companies have
dropped PwC as their auditor.
So things are not looking good for PwC right now.
OK.
And just to clarify, so it's facing a six month
suspension for now and then next steps will be decided
after that?
Yes.
So basically we're expecting that if the fine is to
be implemented, it will come within the next few weeks
of the early few days of September.
And then what happens after to the Chinese unit and
to its international image, we will only know once China
officially reprimands PW C.
All right, Water Imran from DW Business, thanks so much
for that.
Thank you.