The fallout from the ongoing corruption scandal in South Africa continues to expand. In February, now-former President Jacob Zuma resigned from his role. The highly influential and controversial Gupta family is under investigation for its role in corruption. And now, the negative consequences for some of the more pedestrian players are becoming more serious.
KPMG’s woes began when it gave a clean bill on audited financial statements of Gupta family companies. KPMG had eight partners leave over these audits and brought in partners from outside the country to try and salvage their work in South Africa. However, it now appears the KPMG imbroglio goes much deeper. It was recently revealed that two partners involved in an audit for VBS—a mutual lender that was placed into receivership (called curatorship in South Africa)—held financial interests with the financial institution. VBS is alleged to broken public financial laws when lending money to former President Zuma. The KPMG audit of VBS gave the financial institution a clean audit report.
