The scandal that has swamped KPMG in the past month has many moving parts, but it can all be summarised in one earthy Australian expression – “same s–t, different bucket”.

We have seen this show many times before, including in 2022 when it was revealed that PWC worked with the federal government on new business tax plans and then sold secret information about those plans to major corporations to help them avoid paying the new taxes.

Like PWC (PriceWaterhouseCooper), KPMG is a big business that obtains highly sensitive information from its work with major corporations and governments, meaning that conflicts of interest are impossible to avoid.

And like other big businesses, in the absence of an effective deterrent and robust regulation, the pursuit of profit maximisation will inevitably move the business towards doing harm – whether it be to clients, customers, employees, taxpayers, the environment or democracy. 

The whistleblower who exposed this KPMG scandal attributed it to the “pursuit of revenue growth at all costs”.

When former High Court judge Kenneth Hayne presided over a royal commission into misconduct in the banking and financial services sector, he had to consider why major banks were engaged in illegal money laundering, charging fees for no service, selling useless insurance to unsuspecting customers and steering poor retirees into high risk dud investments.

The explanation wasn’t complicated. In Haynes words: 

“Too often, the answer seems to be greed – the pursuit of short-term profit at the expense of basic standards of honesty …. How else is charging continuing advice fees to the dead to be explained?”

The greed that drove KPMG is the same greed that in recent years drove........

© The New Daily