China hands PwC a 6-month ban and fine over audit of the collapsed developer Evergrande

HONG KONG (AP) — Chinese authorities have banned the accounting firm PwC for six months and fined it over 400 million yuan ($56.4 million) over its involvement in the audit of collapsed property developer Evergrande.

The punishment is the heaviest yet for international accounting firms operating in China. PwC will be banned from signing off on any financial results in the country for six months. Already, it has been losing clients.

China’s Ministry of Finance said in a statement Friday that it was imposing 116 million yuan ($16.35 million) in fines and confiscation of illegal gains on PwC Zhong Tian, also known as PwC China, as well as a six-month business suspension, revocation of PwC’s Guangzhou branch and an administrative warning.

A separate regulator, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, also imposed fines and confiscations totaling 325 million yuan ($45.8 million) on PwC for allegedly failing to perform due diligence in the audit of Evergrande.

China’s finance ministry said PwC issued “false audit reports” of Evergrande and that the audit procedures had “serious defects” in design and implementation, leading to many false conclusions. It also accused PwC of not maintaining “professional skepticism” and failing to point out errors and a lack of information disclosure by Evergrande during the audits.

The securities regulator said 88% of the records kept by PwC regarding the real estate projects were inconsistent with the actual implementation and were “seriously unreliable.” When on-site investigations were carried out, some projects were still “a piece of vacant land” despite being considered to have met the delivery conditions, the regulator said.

“The work performed by PwC Zhong Tian’s Hengda audit team fell