The global chairman of EY has expressed “regret” that a fraud at collapsed German fintech Wirecard was “not uncovered sooner” by his firm’s auditors and said the Big Four accounting group would “raise the bar significantly” on its vetting work.
Carmine Di Sibio, who has run EY since January 2019, wrote to clients amid a backlash against the group after it failed to identify a €1.9bn fraud at the once high-flying payments processor it audited for a decade.
“Many people believe that the fraud at Wirecard should have been detected earlier and we fully understand that,” Mr Di Sibio wrote in the letter. “Even though we were successful in uncovering the fraud, we regret that it was not uncovered sooner.”