From the Independent:
“Dubai World will start a formal process next week that will see it invite leading banks, including HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Lloyd’s Banking Group and Standard Chartered, to create a steering committee to represent the many lenders. KPMG has been lined up by the lead banks to represent them in negotiations, with a formal appointment expected once the compilation of the five-to-six bank steering committee is finalised.
My Comment:
Now, KPMG is the big four accounting firm that gave Madoff´s representations to Tremont Group Holdings (a US fund that Madoff purportedly hoodwinked) a thumbs up. The Tomchin Family Charitable Trust, one of numbers of investors who were allegedly scammed by Madoff, has launched a lawsuit against KPMG and Tremont for negligence in monitoring one of Tremont´s funds that invested with Madoff.
The lawsuit included a list of other Madoff clients that included Victoria de Rothschild of the banking family of the Rothschilds and a Tory party contributor:
“Also on the list of Mr Madoff’s British clients is Lady Victoria de Rothschild, who is related to Nathaniel Rothschild, the co- chairman of Atticus Capital, the hedge fund.
Lady Victoria is a well-known figure on the society circuit and became known more recently as a lender to the Tory party, having set up a special company that gave the party a £1,014,000 loan that is due to be repaid in 2010.”
KPMG has also been hit with a $1b lawsuit for “reckless and negligent” auditing of failed subprime broker, New Century Financial, reportedly the first major case against an auditor arising from the financial crisis.
My Comment
So we have a Madoff-tainted accounting firm KPMG, with multiple legal problems, representing the banks that loaned to Dubai on one side, and (as I noted before) French banking legend Rothschild on the other side, heading up the restructuring efforts for Dubai….
Wiki has a list of KPMG´s legal infractions that includes this:
“In February 2007 KPMG Germany was investigated for ignoring questionable payments in the Siemens bribery case.[29] (Siemens agreed to pay a record $1.34 billion in fines to settle the case in December, 2008.) In November 2008 the Siemens Supervisory Board recommended changing auditors from KPMG to Ernst & Young.[30]
In 2006, Fannie Mae sued KPMG for malpractice for approving years of erroneous financial statements.[31]
In March 2008 KPMG was accused of enabling “improper and imprudent practices” at New Century Financial, a failed mortgage company[32] and KPMG agreed to pay $80 million to settle suits from Xerox shareholders over manipulated earnings reports.”
Some confidence-builder… a bank that´s been closely connected to the Madoff scam and to the Fannie and Freddie case (and hence, to Goldman Sachs)…
KPMG and Deloitte were brought in to investigate India´s ¨Madoff¨” – the fraud- riddled IT outsourcing giant Satyam (now Mahindra Satyam, its post-merger avatar – over the objections of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, India´s regulator, which said KPMG was not registered with it and would thus not be subject to its code of conduct or disciplinary proceedings.