Nonprofit organisation Corruption Watch on Tuesday endorsed an investigation into auditing firm KPMG and international consulting group McKinsey around allegations of their involvement in Gupta-related business dealings.

Audit watchdog, the Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors has launched a probe into KPMG’s 2014 audit of Linkway Trading, the company alleged to be involved in the related Free State dairy and Gupta wedding scandals.

Earlier this week, the latest Gupta email leaks suggested that government funds under the control of the Free State Department of Agriculture and Rural Development were used to pay for a Gupta wedding and that former KPMG CEO Moses Kgosana had attended the wedding.

Corruption Watch says the explanation given by KPMG on whether its audit revealed money laundering in the movement of cash from the Free State provincial government, via a controversial dairy project, to bank accounts in the United Arab Emirates and back to Gupta business accounts in South Africa, was “unconvincing and inadequate”.
 
“Corruption Watch has long established the role of supposedly respectable companies who facilitate and sometimes benefit from such unethical and often illegal flows of cash. These companies are equally culpable when they are aware of such illegal transactions and fail to raise any concerns,” the organisation said in a statement.
 
Meanwhile, the organization said equally disturbing was McKinsey’s arrangement to subcontract 30% of their Eskom work to Trillion under the guise of ‘supplier development’. 

This is in spite of their denial of having worked on any projects on which Trillian worked as a subcontractor to Eskom.

Corruption Watch is consulting its lawyers regarding McKinsey’s business dealings with Eskom to assess whether to refer their conduct to the South African and US criminal justice authorities.