By Lucy White, Daily Mail, London (TNS)

The accounting watchdog in the U.K. has issued another warning to bean counters after it uncovered widespread evidence of cheating in exams.

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) said it remained “deeply concerned” about accountants swindling their way through their qualifications after reviewing the controls firms have in place. Earlier this year, the FRC’s executive director of supervision Sarah Rapson wrote to the seven largest audit firms—EY, PwC, KPMG, Deloitte, BDO, Grant Thornton and Mazars—asking them to report on how they prevented cheating. It followed scandals such as an £84.5 million fine for EY’s U.S. arm for allowing candidates to cheat on exams, including an ethics test, a £129,000 penalty for PwC for failing to prevent 1,200 staff gaming internal tests, and a £257,000 fine for KPMG Australia for inadequate training.

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Just this month, the Washington, DC-based Public Company Accounting Oversight Board fined three of KPMG’s international subsidiaries—including KPMG U.K.—and four individuals a total of £6.3 million. It found staff at the firms were sharing answers to internal tests among themselves, and there were no controls in place to identify this.

Through its inquiries, and other supervision, the FRC said it found further instances of cheating.

All of the firms responded to the FRC saying that they had a “zero tolerance” approach to exam fraud.

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