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Tony Moukbel
Tony Moukbel
Multi-Talented Innovator | 13 Innovations & 4 Patents | Cyber Security Expert | IT & Ai Engineering | 58 Certifications in Cybersecurity, Forensics, Programming & Electronics Dev.
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View Artur Nadolny’s profile
Artur Nadolny
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CNC Programmer, Setter, Operator (Lathes – Fanuc) at tooling international limited
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15h •
ONE WOMAN TRIED TO STOP BRITAIN’S BIGGEST CORPORATE COLLAPSE
Emma Mercer was new to her finance job at Carillion, one of Britain’s biggest construction companies. Six weeks in, she found something that should have stopped everything. The numbers in the company accounts were made up. Debts were hidden. Profits were invented. Projects worth hundreds of millions of pounds were lying on paper.
She told her boss. He ignored her. She told the CEO. Same. She went to HR because she had nobody left to tell. A board member later put it in writing. Emma was a whistleblower who did not feel she was listened to.
She was right about every single thing.
So what did the board do? They cancelled the independent investigation and gave the job to KPMG instead.
The same company that had been checking Carillion’s accounts every year for 19 years and calling them healthy. The same company being paid £29 million by Carillion to do it.
MP Frank Field said it out loud in Parliament. KPMG were asked to mark their own homework.
They gave themselves top marks.
Eight months after Emma raised the alarm, Carillion collapsed. January 2018. The biggest company bankruptcy in British history.
Here is what that meant for real people. 3,000 workers lost their jobs overnight. 28,500 people saw their pensions cut. There was a £2.6 billion hole in the pension fund that ordinary workers had paid into for years. Taxpayers spent £150 million just keeping hospitals, schools and prisons running while the mess was cleaned up.
Meanwhile, the former Finance Director Richard Adam sold every share he owned on the exact day the 2016 annual report was published. He walked away with £750,000 in his pocket. The shares were worth nothing a few months later.
The regulator FRC took five years to do anything. When it finally did, KPMG was fined £21 million, the biggest fine ever handed to an auditor in Britain. It also came out that KPMG staff had faked meeting notes and changed spreadsheets to fool the regulator when it came to inspect.
The lead auditor was banned from the profession for 10 years.
The fine was still less than what KPMG was paid by Carillion.
One woman walked into a new job and told the truth in her first six weeks. She was ignored and pushed aside. The executives who ignored her kept their bonuses. The auditors who backed them up kept their fees. The workers who had nothing to do with any of it lost their jobs and their pensions.
Rt Hon Rachel Reeves said it at the time. The board claimed they never saw it coming. Emma Mercer saw it in a month and a half.
This is how British corporate accountability works.
Sources:
BBC News
The Guardian
Financial Times
Private Eye Magazine
Accountancy Age
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View Karl Robertson’s profile
Karl Robertson 3rd+Karl Robertson • 3rd+
Verification and Validation Engineer | IEng, FS Eng
3h
💡 Key Takeaway: KPMG has effectively “paid its way out” of the Carillion scandal through fines and settlements, but the £2.6 billion deficit remains the largest ever hit taken by the UK’s pension safety net.
11
View Leslie Stove’s profile
Leslie Stove Verified Profile 3rd+Leslie Stove • 3rd+
Haven’t got a titleDon’t need a titleDon’t want a title
36m
Karl Robertson and KPMG still keep getting government, council and NHS contracts…..
View Karl Robertson’s profile
Karl Robertson 3rd+Karl Robertson • 3rd+
Verification and Validation Engineer | IEng, FS Eng
(edited) 3h
The £2.6 billion deficit was never “plugged” by Carillion, KPMG, or their directors. When the company collapsed in January 2018, it had just £29 million in cash remaining—not even enough to cover 2% of that liability.Instead, the deficit was dealt with through the UK’s “lifeboat” system.
Fines and legal settlements did not go toward filling the multi-billion-pound hole in the workers’ pension fund. The £1.3 Billion Claim against KPMG reached an out-of-court settlement with Carillion’s liquidators. The final settlement amount remains confidential, but it was paid to the Official Receiver to be distributed among all creditors (including banks and suppliers). It was not a direct payment to the pension fund.… more
Augustin Francq 3rd+Augustin Francq • 3rd+
Consultant senior chez Corevalue
3h
I guess the cooked books are common in property development companies in most of Europe since 10 years.
There is a bubble in the sector and property values wll have to drop not even considering a probable raise in interest rates.
Watch out.
ZAFER KARACA Premium Profile 3rd+ZAFER KARACA • 3rd+
Lawyer & Mediator
13h
World culture and values changed a lot since 90s. One has to remember Enron case of 2001.
Telling big lies and protecting liars have sadly become a business culture in the world with the help of corrupt media, when life was rather slower during mid 90’s. That period also coincides with, end of cold war and looting of USSR and eastern block. After 2000s, technology (especially internet) brought in new values. And liars were called visionary, leader in politics/ state entities and big business corporations whilst the hard working and prudent ones were oppressed and struggling with mobbing or discrimination. Liars and lies should be treated like virus of the business world. … more
View Karl Robertson’s profile
Karl Robertson 3rd+Karl Robertson • 3rd+
Verification and Validation Engineer | IEng, FS Eng
(edited) 3h
Was the £2.6 billion hole in the pension fund ever plugged? KPMG cooked the books, marking their own homework, and earned very well from the business model. Therefore it seems fair that they refund the pension deficit.
Meanwhile, the former Finance Director Richard Adam sold every share he owned on the exact day the 2016 annual report was published. He walked away with £750,000 in his pocket. The shares were worth nothing a few months later. WTF.
In January 2026, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) fined Adam £232,800 for acting recklessly and being “knowingly concerned” in misleading the market.
His 2016 earnings were in the order of £1.64 million. Therefore his fine was just 14% of his earnings that year. Richard Adam’s total earnings during his nearly 10-year tenure at Carillion are estimated at over £7 million, including salary, bonuses, and share proceeds. His fine was just 3% of his total Carillon earnings!… more
John Turner 3rd+John Turner • 3rd+
Operations Partner @ Stormflow Plumbing Supplies | Product Delivery, Sanitation Systems, Storm water and Flood Management
1h
Systems always protect systems and fees reflect the risk.
Charlie Middleton 3rd+Charlie Middleton • 3rd+
Fraud Investigator / Tax Lawyer / Whistleblower Advocate
1h
That’s how whistleblowers are treated in America too. And let’s face, England and America are better than almost all the other countries. Had she blown the whistle somewhere else, she may have been killed or imprisoned. The American approach is usually to try to buy and intimidate the whistleblower into silence. At least that was my experience. The most nefarious part is the complicity of the supposed watchdogs. In my personal experience and in almost all the examples I’ve read about, almost everybody acts in their own self interest and hides the truth – including the board, the internal auditors, the internal lawyers, the controllers, internal compliance, Ombudsman, external auditors, external lawyers and regulators. The solution is obvious to me: change the players self-interest with strong whistleblower award laws. That is the answer to the cancer of corruption.… more
View Michael Collins’ profile
Michael Collins 3rd+Michael Collins • 3rd+
C.E.O. at Hygienic I. T. Group
2h
Corporation: an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility…
View Christian Thalacker-Heldenstein’s profile
Christian Thalacker-Heldenstein Verified Profile 3rd+Christian Thalacker-Heldenstein • 3rd+
Ambassador for Youth4Planet’s CreatiVelo initiative | EU Climate Pact Ambassador | Market Intelligence | Project Management | ESG | Compliance & Due-Diligence | Business Development | Marketing
2h
Decency NEEDED
View Derek Kilroe’s profile
Derek Kilroe 3rd+Derek Kilroe • 3rd+
Chairman
9m
when does 2-3 equal 20? When accounting says it does 🤣
Nothing surprises me today but one company in the USA when the execs sold stock knowing a crash was coming went to prison, but guess US law is different than UK law 🤔
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