According to the Australian Financial Review, KPMG secretly and repeatedly accessed the whistleblower’s work computer, extracted documents detailing their allegations of data misuse, and then shared the material with senior partners and the firm’s former chief executive. The global accounting firm had a legal right to access the employee’s work laptop.
What surprised him was the timing: the whistleblower did it while he was in a sensitive confrontation with KPMG over their legal defense.
The nearly two-year undercover search by IT staff at the behest of the firm’s general counsel’s office also sits awkwardly against management’s claim that there was insufficient detail to investigate.
“There appears to be a culture of abuse of legal professional privilege to cover up wrongdoing in large partnerships” Senator Deborah O’Neill, who aired the allegations in parliament, said. “Covering your own cover-up just kills them.”
Under the scandal
The background is one of Australia’s greatest corporate governance stories. A former KPMG audit employee has alleged that the partners repeatedly shared confidential client information internally to win lucrative audit contracts, including using board documents from audit client Lendlease to solicit work from Westpac, Dexus and Macquarie.
The claims aired in parliament by Senator Deborah O’Neill are controversial. KPMG initially called them “unfounded” and later admitted its handling of the whistleblower and its internal investigation “fell short” and “were not conducted with due diligence”.
The result was severe. KPMG Australia’s chief executive Andrew Yates and its head of audit have resigned, corporate regulator ASIC is formally investigating partners, the firm has lost its decades-long Lendlease audit and governments are reviewing contracts worth more than A$650 million. Dozens of current and former partners face a parliamentary inquiry on June 19.
“If a company like KPMG can do it for Lendlease, it can do it for anyone” O’Neill told ABC.
The traveling part
For anyone outside Australian accounting, the laptop is the summing up detail. From keystrokes to checking webcams, employers are now able to monitor staff more than many realize, and the line between legal surveillance and surveillance is thin and mostly self-directed. Here’s how TNW covers it Remote workplace tracking is already available and why firms should beware of him.
The KPMG case sharpens the question in its most difficult form: what happens when an employer uses that legal access against someone who tries to expose it?
This irony alone, a firm that bets a lot on technology sits awkwardly Anthropic’s put Claude in front of all of its 276,000 employees. The same systems that make work efficient also make employees more visible to their employers, and the rules for what bosses can do with that visibility are largely written by bosses.
Australia’s assistant treasurer has said the government will consider new laws to better protect whistleblowers. The open question, far beyond KPMG, is whether “we were legally allowed to” is a good enough answer when every desk has a viewing device on every desk.
