I nearly spat out my claret reading it
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Are you a car park attendant?
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I’ll be voting no in person on the 21 Feb. I do worry they’ll pull a democrats/sleepy joe fast one with the mail in voting (online voting). Concerning
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According to the radio this morning there are 37,000 CAI and CPA accountants in the country. 1 out of every 150 men women and children in the country is an accountant. No wonder the country is fucked.
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mark gargan is the man to steer your future
Are you a Tory? ( don’t answer that)
Sure the car park attendants and the banana pickers aren’t real accountants at all.
At all at all at all.
This has shaken me to the core. One of the ccha’s is a WIP ACA. I will have to advise them to consider this carefully and be careful not get tarred with the CPA “brand”.
We must resist this.
Can you throw up the full article?
A partner at Grant Thornton Ireland, John Glennon, has also been accused in the same legal action of having helped the US firm’s master fund to tailor the wording of potentially negative audit findings to minimise investor concerns.
Grant Thornton Ireland said it cannot comment on legal matters when asked about the significant and serious claims that have been made against it and one of its partners.
Mr Glennon is a partner in Grant Thornton Ireland’s audit practice.
Jonathan Perlman, the receiver of the Florida-based investment firm, TCA Fund Management Group, and related entities, claims that Grant Thornton Ireland and Grant Thornton Cayman Islands “offered to turn a blind eye” to what he says were “significant accounting inconsistencies and improper controls” and were “grossly negligent”.
TCA Fund Management Group acted as an investment adviser to TCA Global Credit Master Fund, which received investments from feeder funds, which were then invested at the direction of TCA Fund Management Group. The master fund provided financing investments to small and medium-sized companies.
Mr Perlman claims in his complaint that while Grant Thornton Ireland and Grant Thornton Cayman Islands included qualified opinions in the 2017 and 2018 accounts of TCA Global Credit Master Fund in relation to a total of more than $700m in supposed investment banking income and assets, the qualifications “failed to convey the whole truth to investors”.
“Rather, they downplayed or outright omitted fund management’s [TCA Fund Management Group] control and accounting deficiencies,” Mr Perlman claims.
“Through the final audit reports for 2017 and 2018, the Grant Thornton defendants provided bad actors within Fund Management [TCA Fund Management Group] with a way to justify severe accounting irregularities by producing and certifying qualified audit opinions.
“The Grant Thornton defendants’ opinions wilfully disregarded and covered up what the Grant Thornton defendants knew: there was little to no backup for the tens of millions of dollars in unearned, unpaid, and/or unrecoverable ‘investment banking’ fees, among other misconduct.”
He also claims that Grant Thornton initially intended to file a so-called “adverse opinion” in the 2018 accounts for TCA Global Credit Master Fund. However, it later agreed to a less problematic “qualified opinion” instead.
A ‘qualified’ audit opinion is negative and indicates auditors are not happy to provide an unqualified or clean report, while a more serious ‘adverse’ opinion represents a stronger red flag.
“Additionally, between April 30, 2019, and July 16, 2019, several discussions took place in which [the] Master Fund dictated changes to the 2018 report which the Grant Thornton defendants acquiesced to,” the receiver alleges.
In 2021, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged the former TCA chief executive, Robert Press, and the group’s former chief portfolio manager, Donna Silverman, for their roles in artificially inflating the net asset values and performance results of several funds managed by TCA.
The SEC said that TCA did this by recording non-binding transactions and fraudulent investment banking fees on the funds’ books and records.
Without admitting or denying the SEC’s findings, Mr Press and Ms Silverman each agreed to the entry of a cease-and-desist order. Mr Press was barred from the securities industry and agreed to hand over $4.4m of overcharged management and performance fees he received, as well as more than $1m in interest and penalties. Ms Silverman also paid a penalty.
The receiver of TCA Fund Management Group has now insisted that Grant Thornton’s Irish and Cayman Islands’ arms failed in their duties as auditors and knew of the “improper practices” of certain insiders at TCA Fund Management Group. He has claimed that the Grant Thornton entities “understood that these practices were misstating financial information to the independent directors [of TCA] who were relying on such information.
“But instead of exposing those issues in their independent audits and revealing the financial deception to the independent directors of the funds – which is a primary function of an independent auditor – the Grant Thornton defendants failed to prevent this wrongful conduct rather than risk losing the engagement and substantial fees that it was being paid by master fund.”
Mr Perlman claims that Grant Thornton’s Irish and Cayman Islands’ units were paid a total of almost $1m in fees by the TCA master fund to which “they were not entitled” due to the alleged breaches of their duty. He has requested a jury trial in the case.
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Requested a jury trial, ruh roh.
Listen, a qualified report should have set alarm bells ringing in any investors head. John is being blackguarded here. These receivers are unscrupulous bloodhounds.
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Lets not forget that Grant Thornton did the leg work exposing RTE and COTY runner up tubs last year
They’ve also exposed and cleaned up a lot of shoddy audit work by the big 4 on entities like Quinn and the FAI. I wonder are these receivers acting with a vested interest from some Irish players.
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The big 4 get away with murder we need the likes of GT to show what goes on behind closed doors. Hopefully the misgivings will be dealt with and the reslngood people can get on with exposing the fuckery elsewhere
If Mr Glennon travels to the US he might end up wearing an orange jumpsuit
+1,000,000. This isn’t just an attack on Mr Glennon & Grant Thornton, it’s an unwarranted targeting of our profession. You wouldn’t see such indiscriminate assaults in the likes of Ukraine, Gaza or Limerick. What’s the judge’s quote (Lord Denning?) that’s the basis for all case law in this area again? “Watchdogs not bloodhounds.” A qualified audit report for goodness sake. Hopefully this won’t affect the delicate amalgamation process between CAI and CPA.
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