> 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).

Most institutions (especially financial) have strict document retention policies to protect themselves from situations like this. It's not shady – just a way of limiting liability.

At my first job I made the mistake of discovering a cache of old documents, documents that were far older than the company's seven-year document retention policy. The cache, being my discovery, meant I became the one responsible for destroying it. It was dozens on dozes of bankers boxes filled with documents that I had to de-spine before shredding.

You would have thought that the process was a chore but for me it was exhilarating. The slowness of the process gave me the opportunity to speed read through it all. There was nothing scandalous in there, but I became somewhat of a historian over many quiet nights.

Because the legal requirement is to keep those financial records for a maximum of 10 years? I'm sure it depends on jurisdiction, and the type of the document, but financial records generally 10 years in Europe.

The irony of these documents being (allegedly) backdated, and this response, is not lost on me.

"when the USA government stole my money from a bank transfer claiming suspicion of whatever"

Details please! That is really interesting.

Document retention policies are often constructed to require documents be discarded after a certain date.

Having a universal rule is about the only way to ensure decisions aren’t being made for other reasons and that they comply with your privacy standards.

public accounting firms are, as a rule, generally loaded with people who aren't that capable (there are exceptions for sure)

I doubt they even knew what was going on

There should be a limit. You can’t expect me to keep a client’s records for two decades. For software development, I think 2 years is reasonable. Many industries already have proper (and mandatory) limits, usually somewhere in the 3-7 year range depending on the field (finance tends to be higher) and the country. Some countries, especially developing ones, have no bookkeeping rules at all.

But after 2 decades for a financial account, I'd assume any recovery as a gift rather than a right.

If that account was truely forgotten about, there is no way it wasn't closed and simply sent to the relevant state Unclaimed Funds group of the state treasury where it waits to be claimed for quite indefinitely.

Oh, come on. HN complains about excessive data hoarding all the time. Now it's wrong to not hoard data? This is just another damned if you do, damned it you don't situation and, predictably, the outrage option is voted to the top.

2013 is not 20 years old so those documents should be readily available.