With elections around the corner, its not only the temple issue which is on the Sangh Parivar’s agenda. In the current battle for turf, after the long forgotten Cola turf wars, the ‘economic’ hardliners have decided to up their ante against the phoren invasion of accountancy firms. On the hit list are what have been dubbed as the Big 4 — PriceWaterHouseCoopers, KPMG, Ernst and Young and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu — by The Chartered Accountants’ Action Committee for Level Playing Field supported by the Swadeshi Jagran Manch. And blessing the forum in Chennai on Sunday will be Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi who will inaugurate the address with S Gurumurthy unveiling all that is wrong with these accountancy firms and former Power Minister Suresh Prabhu also present on the occasion.The allegation is that under the World Trade Organisation (WTO), where entry of foreign firms in the services sector is still being negotiated, entry of foreign accountancy firms in India is ‘illegal’. ‘‘The Big 4 even act as consultants to the Indian government is the greatest irony,’’ says the charter of the forum.Citing examples of the huge fines paid by these companies in the US for faulty accountancy: PriceWaterHouseCoopers has paid a fine of $55 million in the case of Micro Strategy, $100 million in the case of Home State Holding; Ernst and Young has coughed up $335 million in the case of Cendant, $548 million in the case of FDIC, $400 million for Savings and Loans and $2,200 million in the case of Bank of Cantonale. KPMG has paid fines to the tune of $ 9.9 million in the Pie Mutual case, $ 125 million in the Rite Aid case and $ 75 million in the Oxford Case while Deloitte has coughed up $ 23 million in the Kentucky Life case among others, the forum has alleged.
