(Bloomberg) 1Malaysia Development Bhd. has appointed a new auditor almost a year after Deloitte LLP notified the state investment company that it planned to resign.
U.K.-based international accounting network Parker Randall has already started auditing some of the subsidiaries of 1MDB, the fund’s board of directors Chairman Mohd. Irwan Serigar Abdullah told reporters last Thursday. 1MDB said a Malaysian unit of Parker Randall was hired.
1MDB said in July that Deloitte is resigning and the company is seeking a replacement, without giving a reason for the departure. It also said then that its audited financial statements for 2013 and 2014 shouldn’t be relied on after U.S. prosecutors said more than $3.5 billion was misappropriated from the fund during a period that included those years.
The Malaysian fund is at the center of several international investigations into alleged corruption and money laundering by public officials. Prosecutors in at least four countries—Singapore, Switzerland, Luxembourg and the U.S. —are looking into money flows from the investment vehicle, which was established for national development. 1MDB has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
Singapore prosecutors filed papers on Thursday to charge a former branch manager of Falcon Private Bank Ltd., the fifth person to be indicted in the city-state’s probe linked to 1MDB. Jens Sturzenegger, a Swiss, faces 16 charges including failing to report to the authorities that $1.27 billion of inflows into two bank accounts were suspicious.
Parker Randall International described itself on its website as a worldwide organization of independent audit and accounting firms, with representatives in 50 countries and about 2,000 partners and employees.
1MDB had said previously that it couldn’t file its accounts for the financial year ended March 2015 because it wasn’t able to prepare statements for audit as necessary documents were seized by authorities during a raid in July 2015. Its previous auditors include KPMG and Ernst & Young, according to transcripts from a Malaysian parliamentary committee investigation.
- Anisah Shukry, Bloomberg News
