“We hear external investigation, internal investigation, legal advice — we don’t know what’s what.”
There’s an easy answer to Deborah O’Neill’s confusion, expressed at the parliamentary inquiry into the KPMG audit leaks scandal: you aren’t meant to know.
When the proverbial hit the fan in late March after O’Neill’s speech to parliament, KPMG insisted it had looked into claims that partners had used confidential client data from companies such as Lendlease and Optus to pitch for work, and that those claims had “not been substantiated”.
There were raised eyebrows when KPMG mentioned an internal investigation. But former chief executive Andrew Yates and chair Martin Sheppard also said the firm had “engaged an external law firm to review the internal investigations” and then engaged “another external law firm [after O’Neill’s speech] to conduct an investigation into each of the conduct-related allegations”.
