- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
By 
Neil Hodge2023-10-16T14:00:00
Spain’s labor ministry fined the Big Four accountancy firms at least 1.4 million euros (U.S. $1.5 million) total for overworking and underpaying their respective employees.
Despite no complaint being lodged by any employee, the Big Four offices were each raided in November after the Spanish Ministry of Labor opened an investigation into the firms’ working practices regarding concerns employees were working longer hours than their employers’ records showed.
In January, Labor Minister Yolanda Díaz warned, “The excesses and abuses of overtime hours are being investigated and the mandate is clear. … No big company, no matter how big, is beyond the law.”
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KPMG accepted the conclusions and record penalties levied against it by the U.K. Financial Reporting Council for the “exceptional” level of deficiencies found to have taken place during the Big Four audit firm’s work at collapsed construction company Carillion.
Recent enforcement cases against food delivery company Glovo and online retailer Amazon in Spain have shone a spotlight on the compliance difficulties associated with engaging workers as freelancers rather than full-time employees.
Big Four audit firm PwC is being sued by one of its employees for more than £200,000 (U.S. $234,000) after he injured himself at a post-work drink event in 2019. The incident is not the first where “team-bonding” efforts have proven problematic.
Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest person and the apparent right-hand man of incoming U.S. president Donald Trump, has been taken to court for a third time by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly violating securities law.
Twelve more firms have been dinged with fines by the Securities and Exchange Commission for failing to properly supervise employees who used off-channel communications to conduct company business. In this latest round of enforcement actions, nine investment advisers and three broker-dealers will pay a total of $63 million.
Capital One promised very high interest rates on millions of savings accounts but the bank didn’t deliver, losing customers more than $2 billion, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau alleged.
