Mumbai: An anonymous whistleblower, who claimed to be a part of the senior management at Deloitte has told Moneylife that he is “privy to several internal irregularities in providing professional services to IL&FS”. On several occasions, the IL&FS’s top management would meet and “coerce Deloitte partners for a more favourable position or watered down position”, he said adding that this was in addition to the “watering down of views” that already happened internally at Deloitte.
Outlining how the audit firm benefited IL&FS by helping the failed group fudge its accounts year after year, the anonymous whistleblower said the Haskins and Sells LLP (Deloitte) ensured a clean chit to IL&FS even when the RBI claimed to have red flagged a few issues and asked it to reduce its outstanding debt.
Deloitte has an internal reporting system; but the whistleblower said: “I have no faith in the current leadership and, hence, am consciously not resorting to our internal whistle-blowing mechanism.” Deloitte has audited IL&FS Financial Services Ltd (IFIN) for 10 years and remained the auditor until it completed 10 years in 2018.
The audit report had absolutely no adverse findings even in 2017-18. Among other allegation the whistleblower said that Deloitte was a beneficiary of IL&FS’s “unmitigated growth” over the decade in multiple ways. It enjoyed a “preferred advisor role” and was awarded several advisory contracts on a “single sourced basis” at “substantially high fees”.
