BCCI: auditor was 'deceived', chairman says

Keiran Poynter, chairman of PwC, responded quickly to the JDS ruling that
three audits of BCCI were unqualified inappropriately.

The JDS fined PW £150,000 and imposed costs of £825,000 for its work on the
BCCI audits of 1987,1988 and 1989.

‘Importantly, after a long and detailed investigation, the JDS did not find
that Price Waterhouse should have concluded that the relevant Bank of Credit and
Commerce International (BCCI) accounts failed to give a true and fair view,’ he
said.

‘After nearly 15 years, this matter can finally be put to rest. Price
Waterhouse has accepted the fine of £150,000 and the costs on the basis that to
continue to contest the matter further would have been an expensive distraction
from which no useful lessons would emerge.

‘Throughout this matter we have consistently said that Price Waterhouse was
deceived, as indeed criminal convictions have proven.

‘At the time BCCI was closed in 1991, the most recent audit opinion relating
to 1989 was subject to questions. The JDS has not found that there was anything
fundamentally wrong with the opinion, thereby reaffirming Lord Justice Bingham’s
conclusion reached in 1992 after his Inquiry which was: “I rather doubt if other
auditors, similarly placed, would have acted very differently.”’