He added KPMG has owned up to a string of recent issues, like more than a 1,000 staff cheating on an exam and its role in the controversial NSW Government’s Transport Asset Holding Entity (TAHE), which was designed to hide the costs of the state’s railways by shifting billions of dollars of expenses off the state budget and into the new entity.

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“In both instances we owned our mistakes and focused on learning from the experiences. To address the TAHE issue, we have introduced ongoing improvements to the way we manage potential conflicts,” Yates told staff in an email on Wednesday morning.

However, the firm defended its lucrative work with the Defence Department amid allegations from ABC’s Four Corners that KPMG staff charged for work that was not done.

“We strongly refute allegations that KPMG over-billed Defence. Defence has publicly confirmed that their investigations into allegations by a former Defence employee, when they were raised back in 2016, were unsubstantiated. Separately, KPMG also investigated various claims made by a former contractor in 2019. There was no evidence to support over-billing of Defence,” Yates said.

KPMG has also reiterated that it is reviewing its policy on political donations. It says no cash donations were made last year but donations totalling $160,000 were made to political parties consisting of in-kind contributions, event sponsorships and memberships of political forums.

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