> Deloitte Cyprus said it could not comment on the specific allegations because the documents were more than 20 years old and no longer accessible.

That's convenient.

Also, I received a similar response when inquiring about a financial account that had been overlooked (there are reasons, I'm not getting into it) for a couple of decades. "Can't help you. Too old for us to have records." Well, my records are printed documents. Why can't you tell me anything? Reminds me of when the USA government stole my money from a bank transfer claiming suspicion of whatever (my landlord had a Middle Eastern sounding name and it was the 2000s) and then said they had no record of it when I provided all the required documentation to recover it.

In both cases, unfortunately, I concluded that the odds are so stacked against me that I gave up. Convenient system if you're fabulously wealthy or a massive org (such as corporations and government).

Deloitte has got, I've heard (!), in their training material a section about integrity and how important it is to act ethically correct. Deloitte also does sh*t like this and - again, I've heard (!) - asks its employees to bill hours on projects they are not working on so that they can maximize profits at their clients expenses. Also elephants are pink.

How this company can proceed to exist is beyond me.

For legal reasons I must emphasize that this is hear-say and should not be trusted as facts. At least one statement is a lie. What you believe to be true is up to you.

Cyprus and Deloitte, why am I not surprised to see those names mentioned together in connection with alleged tax evasion?

For those who don't know, Cyprus is widely regarded as one of Europe's tax havens. And, of cause, Deloitte has offices there.

I just know this will be thoroughly investigated, all responsible parties held accountable, and the proper countermeasures and applicable laws will be updated to punish and disincentivise this behaviour in the future. Just kidding.

Things change when the cost-benefit analysis moves. If you apply the law strictly and effectively, the behaviour will adjust.

I dunno. This all implies a level of central control that doesn't reflect how professional services firms operate. Mostly they're loose partnerships and local offices and partners have the significant discretion. Even legally they're mostly not structured as a global corporation but rather a loose association of legally distinct entities.

There's a tension between having a brand that reflects trust and institutional rigor and avoiding liability for the actions of partners in some far flung jurisdiction.

This article, possibly deliberately because you can read the subtext of exactly what happened with this story, conflates several things knowing that readers won't know the difference.

Transferring assets from Cyprus to BVI? Legal, there is no issue with doing this. What the journalist did, likely upon discovering this was legal, suggested that it was for tax purposes knowing that readers would assume this was illegal in some way...when it is not relevant.

An opinion was then acquired from a KC which, to a normal person, would read as confirmation that something suspect was going on but, if you have experience with this thing, says that in a completely different, unrelated context this would be illegal (it is a bit sad that we live in a world where a journalist will get an opinion from a KC and they will both conspire to produce something that is obviously intended to be misleading to readers).

Backdating asset transfer from Cyprus to BVI? Again, legal. The role of an auditor is not to provide advice on the legality of the transfer. All that happens is that they get some paperwork saying the assets were transferred two years ago, they go...yes, the paperwork is correct. If you think they should be doing anything else, you don't understand what an auditor is supposed to do.

What would be more questionable is if the transfer didn't actually happen two years ago but the auditor would have no way to know if that was the case. This would be easy to determine in other cases but in the case of personal property, there is no way to know.

What likely happened with the story though is that the journalist put in a lot of time, realised at some point that they didn't actually have any evidence (implicating the people they wished to implicate) so wrote the story that Deloitte were to blame. Will be quite interesting to see what happens next because at several points in the article the journalist uses words that do not describe the role of an auditor i.e. Deloitte was "advising on the falsification of records"...when they show an email which clearly shows that Deloitte did not do this (and again, generally, this is not what an auditor is supposed to be doing).

This publicity is probably an actual advertising campaign for them.

Am I too cynical in reading this as an advertisement for Deloitte's services?

Repeat offenders?

Sanction Deloitte Cyprus: don't ever except any paperwork from them again. "Sovereign state", my ass...

And, nothing will happen. Did anything happen via Panama and Pandora paper leaks? Perhaps players with negligible political power to protect themselves were held accountable or selected by bigger fish to fall, but beyond those, nothing. The phenomenon is still happening and social collective action is continuously disrupted via no shortage of mechanisms. Wealth concentration is increasing and buying politicians was always a thing, but now it's publicly flaunted without recourse and they operate against what's good for the electorate interests openly--almost in spite.

I mean, the faltering ability to stir people to deal with Flock issue should be incredibly eye opening to what continuously slides under the radar for heinous activities that are not nearly as public facing or noticeably evident.

*Deloitte CYPRESS falsified documents... After Arthur Anderson went down for global issues, Deloitte split into country based things so when Deloitte Cypress has an issue they can hand wave away it being an issue regarding Deloitte in that country only.

It somewhat operates that way, too. Back when the little company I was at was acquired by Deloitte USA - I was exposed to some of the IT workings. Deloitte Canada did things their way, USA did things their way... no knowledge sharing, combined efforts, learnings/failings passing between the "different companies". Worst of both worlds. For tax and risk reasons.

This must be the first time someone important [0] has been involved in shady financial dealings. One of the joys of being in the internet era is we have much better visibility on the vast multinational web moving money around. We know that senior politicians are well aware of it because they use it to.

It would actually be reasonable if this was headline was news to Abramovich. I expect there are a bunch of standard services rendered to wealthy Russians and they just all use the same guy, who is known to get good results and no-one ever asks why. It is quite likely that there are a small group of fixers who maintain networks for certain geopolitical in-groups. They probably have excellent connections to people like Jeffery Epstein too. No surprise if the Russian circuit is actually flouting western law directly.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_named_in_the_Pa...

I read way too much of the comments before realizing this is not about Marina Abramovich hiding her gains from performance art in Cyprus...

The Big Four really like back-dating things to help their clients. But lying is difficult because the facts come with built-in consistency. Mother Nature ensures all her arithmetic lines up properly every single time like clockwork, but when you try to make stuff up you have to do all that work and not make any mistakes.

And so it's actually easier to spot this fraud than to conduct it. What you need is people willing to go look and people willing to prosecute it even though that's uncomfortable because these crooks always have powerful friends.

Ultimately the bigger problem is the Big Four themselves. They are obviously Too Big To Fail and three of them are based in a single place, London. I believe that the Paris MOU provides us a model for how to fix this in the medium term but I've seen no political will to even look at the problem, much less address it.

Damnatio memoriae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae

> Deloitte falsified documents

Isn't that their core business?

> Accounts signed off by Deloitte in Cyprus

That's all I need to know.

Wrist slapping in 3 .. 2 .. 1 ..

Wouldn't have happened if we used a blockchain.

It's not like we could also just have public access to these documents like some Nordic democracies so people could figure it out ahead of 20 years.

I know this is anecdotal but I remember anywhere you went in financial or political circles in 1990s London, everyone was falling over themselves about the nouveau riche from Russia and former Warsaw Pact countries investing. There were some who said it would drive up real estate prices and some upset about lack of oversight but they were looked at in the media and by politicians as kooky or close to it. Decades later - the Panama Papers, the Epstein files and articles like this and from that journalist killed in Malta exposing corruption.

Mind-boggling what people and corporations knew and did in the shadows while we cheered on and cheer on their holdings.

Not to be too forward, but whenever a company touches Cyprus we all know full well the only reasons are tax evasion or fraud.

Check out the comments in r/soccer if interested -

https://old.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1x3vru3/deloitte_he...

A classic story, as if there was nothing new

Allegations, there was no trial or verdict.

An article like like this could be auto-generated with anybody's name.

> Deloitte Cyprus said it "acts in compliance with applicable laws".

They obviously haven't done anything wrong then.

I'm not able to see the article - for some reason, the Beebs, a division of the British government, wants me to subscribe to see their coverage - but how would this compare to Arthur Anderson and Enron?

If it's anything remotely similar, I don't see how Deloitte could be trusted to file one more tax return.

Put them out of business. There need to be consequences. The Big 4 auditors need to be severely humbled.

The amount of dirt Deloitte has on governments, it is surprising something like this even came out. Likely someone will lose their job and the whole thing will be kicked in the long grass.

Something tells me the political ramifications here will be less than those of the next immigrant stealing a snickers.

The funniest part is that The Telegraph is simultaneously running articles on how the billionaires are leaving UK because of tax.

I think it's maybe time to consider charging those responsible with treason.

Interesting that everybody is going after Deloitte, but why are we giving Abramovich, a known Russian oligarch and close personal friend of Putin a pass? Shouldn't we be more upset about Abramovich evading taxes? Isn't he and his lawyers more to blame because I would assume they're the ones telling Deloitte to do it?

Seems to me there's a lot of misplaced outrage here.

Do you want to have investments into London's real estate and football clubs or not? It takes sacrifices.

They (the billionaire class) all have no shame.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchfor...

BREAKING NEWS: Water is wet

Am I the only one who can’t read the article because of the paywall? Since when does BBC paywall?

Indian fraud

Remember when a major bank turned out to have laundered billions for Mexican drug cartels and was fined only millions?

People would go to prison for crimes like these, but somehow companies get only a slap on the wrist. Whenever a company commits serious, blatant crimes like these, everybody who knew about it and didn't blow the whistle should be considered an accomplice and go to prison. And if it's big enough, or part of the MO of that company, it should be fined the entire value of the company. Nationalise it. Stuff like this should not be tolerated.