Why then are the audit inspections blacked out? These are inspections of public documents, of public financial accounts for this country’s largest corporations yet the findings remain largely secret.

ASIC looked at 49 audits for “Listed entities and other public interest entities” and found failures across the board.

In the KPMG inspection, for instance, 19 of the audits were dodgy, or to quote the ASIC narrative from the bits which were not blacked out, “In our view, the auditor did not obtain reasonable assurance that the financial report was free of material misstatement in 15 of the 70 key areas reviewed in total across 19 audits”.

via Audit Blackout: gatekeepers cuddled while sleeping on the job – Michael West