Americanas, the Brazilian retailer that filed for bankruptcy in New York in January this year, has now admitted that some of its former executives were involved in fraudulent financial statements that masked massively growing indebtedness totaling more than USD 4bn. The company’s investors are furious as are the leaders in Brazil’s capital markets. They are now aiming their fire – and ire – not only at those executives, but also at PwC and KPMG which between them audited the company’s accounts over a number of years. It was actually PwC which revealed in January that there was a USD 4bn hole in the company’s accounts after it had identified “accounting inconsistencies” amounting to USD 8.3bn.
