PwC India Admits to Not Auditing Satyam

Look, maybe this isn't what it seems. Maybe what Ramesh Rajan, chairman and CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers, India meant when he told the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that Lovelock & Lewes actually performed audit procedures on Satyam's balance sheet, he meant this:

See, we didn't audit them in this dimension. We totally audited them in a parallel universe where I'm still me and you're still you but Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston stay together and that manipulative Angelina doesn't ruin their beautiful perfect relationship. That's the dimension we all want to be in, isn't it?

Oh, and the Times of India also says that the audit fees were deposited into a Pricewaterhouse, Bangalore account but were later transferred to a Lovelock & Lewes account. And there's more:

Apart from Rajan, other senior partners of PW, from Delhi and Kolkata, were also summoned by the CBI last week. The partners denied any association with PW, Bangalore and said that Gopalakrishnan and Talluri [partners in charge of the engagement that are in prison] were not entitled to sign any balance sheet on behalf of PW. "So as it turns out, the auditors who are partners with PW, Bangalore, wrongly signed under the name of PW, and also outsourced the work to Lovelock & Lewes," said sources adding that investigations confirm that the entire auditing team at Satyam is from Lovelock & Lewes.

Good god. There's a lot to process so we'll have Dennis Howlett sum it up:

• PWC were the auditors of record but didn’t do the work
  
• PWC audit partners signed off
  
• PWC received fees and then paid to an associate firm
  
• [B]ut..they didn’t do the work
  
• And, by implication are not therefore to blame AND Lovelock and Lewes are a PWC network consulting firm

Got that? Some might say (and by that we mean pretty much everyone) this might not be so good for P. Dub. Stay tuned.

PWC: ‘We didn’t audit Satyam’ [AccMan]
We didn't audit Satyam: PwC [Times of India]

Sphere: Related Content