Who is KPMG?

While working on a story about the Wehat Board I came across a tidbit of information on a Company called KPMG. It turned out that rather than hold a plebiscite run by the government, the Federal Conservatives contracted out the service and it was run by KPMG.

A few people pointed out a number of irregularities in the plebiscite because KPMG "sent out ballots with identification numbers that match numbers on voter declaration forms."

After a few quick searches on KPMG a found out the following:

1. They are one of the top 4 accounting companies in the world and concentrate on 3 types of business: audit, tax and advisory services.

2. They audit almost anything and everything. They were implicated in the Enron audit business and do a lot of work for the Feds including auditing first-nation bands.

3. They continue to be ass-deep in scandal. They helped business to get into South Africa, have pulled the cover off US spending in Iraq, sucked up limited competition bids to reconstruct Afghanistan, have had cases brought against them by the Securities and Exchange Commission, The US department of Justice, and a number of Brazilian courts. In addition they were implicated in the current Conrad Black Scandal, and they lost against both the US department of Justice which found they helped "wealthy clients dodge $2.5 billion in taxes" and against Brazilian lawyers. They agreed to pay $456 million in penalties to the US.

4. They are deeply wrapped up in politics not only in doing a number of studies and audits for both business and government but in running candidates. Interestingly, they've had connections to both the NDP and Greens. More interstingly though, an employee named Kateryna Yushchenko-Chumachenko worked/works for them. She's a CIA agent who's also wife of Viktor Yushchenko, current President of Ukraine.