That's convenient.
Also, I received a similar response when inquiring about a financial account that had been overlooked (there are reasons, I'm not getting into it) for a couple of decades. "Can't help you. Too old for us to have records." Well, my records are printed documents. Why can't you tell me anything? Reminds me of when the USA government stole my money from a bank transfer claiming suspicion of whatever (my landlord had a Middle Eastern sounding name and it was the 2000s) and then said they had no record of it when I provided all the required documentation to recover it.
In both cases, unfortunately, I concluded that the odds are so stacked against me that I gave up. Convenient system if you're fabulously wealthy or a massive org (such as corporations and government).
At my first job I made the mistake of discovering a cache of old documents, documents that were far older than the company's seven-year document retention policy. The cache, being my discovery, meant I became the one responsible for destroying it. It was dozens on dozes of bankers boxes filled with documents that I had to de-spine before shredding.
You would have thought that the process was a chore but for me it was exhilarating. The slowness of the process gave me the opportunity to speed read through it all. There was nothing scandalous in there, but I became somewhat of a historian over many quiet nights.
Company finds 7 year old customer records with PII, location data, etc..: We're going to need a bigger production hard drive!
Please step into the shredder, sir.
It's not personal–it's just policy.
Yup. With every data breach, HN is full of (correct, imo) comments about how tech companies should treat private data as a liability and prune it aggressively.
You go look at mature businesses and you'll find that they do exactly this.
Edtech in particular tends to be pretty conscious of just never having the data in the first place. PII for minors is radioactive.
It's not euphemistic – just diplomatic phrasing.
On the whole, I would say the problem isn't so much using language to whitewash the practice as the troublesome tendency to turn a blind eye until someone becomes persona non grata.
I also think the right and good for society means addressing crimes in a timely manner, which likely means more auditing by independent bodies. Punishing someone for a crime that happened 7+ years ago may feel good, but it is meaningless for a couple of reasons. Should we be punishing people who have reformed? And for those who don't reform, should we be letting criminal behaviour occur across multiple decades?
Dont blame any private company that its not overstepping its legal requirements and adding risks and costs to their business. Its like blaming a guy, any guy, heck all HN we dont pay more taxes than we have to pay, it goes to good things and is moral no?
Some of those decisions should just be forced by law.
What a fucked up world.
Of course you'd have compliance department to look over the processes to minimize the risk of mistakes and correct them ASAP (if you don't, you'd be liable for negligence and open yourself to a higher chance of failures). But since mistakes and miscommunication is inevitable anyway, you'd require hard limits in every obligation - in terms of time, money, scope etc.
Organizations that are not protecting themselves do not live long. And this principle has nothing to do with the nature of their activity.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escheat#Transfer_agents_and_es...
Having a universal rule is about the only way to ensure decisions aren’t being made for other reasons and that they comply with your privacy standards.
Details please! That is really interesting.
But after 2 decades for a financial account, I'd assume any recovery as a gift rather than a right.
I doubt they even knew what was going on
And in these specific cases, 20 years ago? They weren't handling stuff with computers 20 years ago? They didn't keep backups of that? (Another commenter notes a 10-year record keeping requirement in Europe, so in that case it may have legitimately been removed.)
But it's worse with the government. It wasn't 20 years ago, you just did it. And you don't have records? That's theft.
Picking on particular scandal to publicize is more like picking from large heaps of content in a collection, not anything unique or unusual at all.. just not widely known for real reasons...
Tax evasion is a game played by 100% of sophisticated players, to start IMHO
How this company can proceed to exist is beyond me.
For legal reasons I must emphasize that this is hear-say and should not be trusted as facts. At least one statement is a lie. What you believe to be true is up to you.
This one appears to be Cyprus - clearly the center of ethical business operations...
All the while we were doing financial regulation software without any proper tests on the models being done outside of some spot checks.
And the idea of doing those was frowned upon :)
Lovely place.
There's also a fine print at the bottom that says 'lolz'.
It was mostly regurgitating the AWS published best practices on Deloitte letterhead. We all grumbled how "this was not a good use of money", but one of the senior folks from the line of business side said "you guys were going to basically do this anyway...now noone can say you picked the wrong strategy". Which, to be fair, was true.
So that's probably why companies keep hiring them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxd23UVID7k&list=RDGxd23UVID...
There have been a couple of scandals in Australia, and yet they all remain part of 'the big four'. They're all tainted as fuck.
From the footer on (the Uk section) of their website:
> Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (“DTTL”), its global network of member firms, and their related entities (collectively, the “Deloitte organisation”). DTTL (also referred to as “Deloitte Global”) and each of its member firms and related entities are legally separate and independent entities, which cannot obligate or bind each other in respect of third parties.
*cringes in multiple ways*
This is fairly typical for accountancy and law firms.
More explanation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_services_networks
WTF - I am being downvoted for explaining this above? Pure facts!
You can read more about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deloitte#Legal_structure
Things like escalate problems to correct teams, even where to (supposedly anonymously) whistleblow, but thats most probably 1 way ticket to unemployment office with a sife effect of appearing on some industry-wide even if local blacklist.
They are so predicrable I dont read accompanying materials anymore and usually just 1-shot final tests, maybe apart from stuff that I never touched nor heard of, that sometimes requires second go.
To sum it up - those trainings are not ultimate business guidelines. The more they veer on what to do in case of something bad/spicy happens, the more they are some court ordered result of some long legal battle and settlement&fine.
As a result of Siemen's execs bribing various Nigerian princes et al, new employees at the lowest levels were required to take training to teach them that bribing government officials is Bad, mmkay?
The execs did not do time, and AFAIK were not fired. But the secretaries now know they shouldn't do that!
Isn't the whole point of these companies to rubberstamp shady things corporations are doing, so they can shed resposibility more easily when caught?
How can they not proceed. They are making money doing nothing and have no moral boundaries. And now we find out they have no legal boundaries either.
For those who don't know, Cyprus is widely regarded as one of Europe's tax havens. And, of cause, Deloitte has offices there.
- You created an LLC in Cyprus and transferred some IP (usually a trademark) to it
- You licensed that IP to your LLC in an EU country for the amount that basically erased any profit that LLC made
- Cypriot LLCs were not taxed on non-Cyprus income
- Each of non-resident director (or board member, I don't remember) of a Cypriot LLC was not taxed on first 400k euro of income from those LLCs. Double taxation deals Cyprus had protected you from being taxed on that income back home.
I know this is no longer possible with Cyprus, but a variation of that is now happening with e.g. many EU clothing brands having their brand ownership transferred to Egyptian LLCs.
It hardly seems surprising (nor damning) to have one in Cyprus.
Various controversies relating to bailouts after the financial crisis, the rise of anti money laundering controls in the late 2010s, and the Ukraine invasion have severed many of the ties but Abramovich was just one of many to take advantage in the past.
https://www.politico.eu/article/cyprus-is-losing-its-russia-... has a reasonable summary of how the relationship developed.
Deloitte Cyprus is a separate legal entity from all the other (separate, legal) Deloitte entities precisely so any consequences of tax evasion resulting from the...em...lax oversight in Cyprus don't impact all the other things called 'Deloitte'.
"The member firms are primarily organised on an individual country or regional basis and each operates within the legal and regulatory framework of its particular jurisdiction(s). They are separate and independent firms that have come together to practise under a common brand and shared methodologies, client service standards and other professional protocols and guidelines."
https://www.deloitte.com/ce/en/about/governance/network-bran...
But it could be the case!
What I suspect happened with Deloitte specifically is they found a way to appear to expand globally without taking on a lot of the risk. More like brand franchising.
Which is all to say that I wouldn't doubt Deloitte Cyprus (or other branches) have shady stuff going on, but that this structure wasn't designed specifically for that purpose.
Things change when the cost-benefit analysis moves. If you apply the law strictly and effectively, the behaviour will adjust.
There's a tension between having a brand that reflects trust and institutional rigor and avoiding liability for the actions of partners in some far flung jurisdiction.
Transferring assets from Cyprus to BVI? Legal, there is no issue with doing this. What the journalist did, likely upon discovering this was legal, suggested that it was for tax purposes knowing that readers would assume this was illegal in some way...when it is not relevant.
An opinion was then acquired from a KC which, to a normal person, would read as confirmation that something suspect was going on but, if you have experience with this thing, says that in a completely different, unrelated context this would be illegal (it is a bit sad that we live in a world where a journalist will get an opinion from a KC and they will both conspire to produce something that is obviously intended to be misleading to readers).
Backdating asset transfer from Cyprus to BVI? Again, legal. The role of an auditor is not to provide advice on the legality of the transfer. All that happens is that they get some paperwork saying the assets were transferred two years ago, they go...yes, the paperwork is correct. If you think they should be doing anything else, you don't understand what an auditor is supposed to do.
What would be more questionable is if the transfer didn't actually happen two years ago but the auditor would have no way to know if that was the case. This would be easy to determine in other cases but in the case of personal property, there is no way to know.
What likely happened with the story though is that the journalist put in a lot of time, realised at some point that they didn't actually have any evidence (implicating the people they wished to implicate) so wrote the story that Deloitte were to blame. Will be quite interesting to see what happens next because at several points in the article the journalist uses words that do not describe the role of an auditor i.e. Deloitte was "advising on the falsification of records"...when they show an email which clearly shows that Deloitte did not do this (and again, generally, this is not what an auditor is supposed to be doing).
I mean, the faltering ability to stir people to deal with Flock issue should be incredibly eye opening to what continuously slides under the radar for heinous activities that are not nearly as public facing or noticeably evident.
I imagine most groups compete on exactly what they can get away with. The more money you can build for clients the more you can earn. If your competitor is getting away with more illegal shit than you then your clients will go to them.
Sanction Deloitte Cyprus: don't ever except any paperwork from them again. "Sovereign state", my ass...
It would actually be reasonable if this was headline was news to Abramovich. I expect there are a bunch of standard services rendered to wealthy Russians and they just all use the same guy, who is known to get good results and no-one ever asks why. It is quite likely that there are a small group of fixers who maintain networks for certain geopolitical in-groups. They probably have excellent connections to people like Jeffery Epstein too. No surprise if the Russian circuit is actually flouting western law directly.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_named_in_the_Pa...
And so it's actually easier to spot this fraud than to conduct it. What you need is people willing to go look and people willing to prosecute it even though that's uncomfortable because these crooks always have powerful friends.
Ultimately the bigger problem is the Big Four themselves. They are obviously Too Big To Fail and three of them are based in a single place, London. I believe that the Paris MOU provides us a model for how to fix this in the medium term but I've seen no political will to even look at the problem, much less address it.
People would go to prison for crimes like these, but somehow companies get only a slap on the wrist. Whenever a company commits serious, blatant crimes like these, everybody who knew about it and didn't blow the whistle should be considered an accomplice and go to prison. And if it's big enough, or part of the MO of that company, it should be fined the entire value of the company. Nationalise it. Stuff like this should not be tolerated.
It's not like we could also just have public access to these documents like some Nordic democracies so people could figure it out ahead of 20 years.
https://old.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1x3vru3/deloitte_he...
Reddit changed recently to deter AI scraping so that to use "old", you needed to log in sometime in the past 6 months. The "old" lets you see all the comments while the 'new improved version' only lets you read comments to a shallow depth while inserting ads everywhere.
It somewhat operates that way, too. Back when the little company I was at was acquired by Deloitte USA - I was exposed to some of the IT workings. Deloitte Canada did things their way, USA did things their way... no knowledge sharing, combined efforts, learnings/failings passing between the "different companies". Worst of both worlds. For tax and risk reasons.
If it's anything remotely similar, I don't see how Deloitte could be trusted to file one more tax return.
They obviously haven't done anything wrong then.
i miss being able to donate my liabilities away.
there's no way to absolve yourself from the murder machine anymore.
The billionaire class made patriotism right-wing coded, thus dirty. They treat the borders as fluid as the millions of migrants they push through them.
Mind-boggling what people and corporations knew and did in the shadows while we cheered on and cheer on their holdings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deloitte
Treason by British citizens against the British state. If you have to charge the CEO or board, so be it, there is a British citizen who is liable here.
Also real estate prices in London at the top of the market are going down and down now that the money pump of corrupt Russian money has been switched off.
I'd be less disgruntled about it if a) i feel like i got my money's worth and most importantly b) everyone paid their fair share
Seems to me there's a lot of misplaced outrage here.
The other we expect to oversee these kinds of things. Considering they do accounting for a quarter of the worlds rich and largest businesses, this should raise alarms as to what else they're fudging.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchfor...
I couldn't agree with the guy more, when he says:
>> when workers have more money, businesses have more customers—and need more employees
But that seems to be exactly the sane logic that old Jeff Bezos is spending his life and his billions trying to find a hack around. I'm still not clear who Amazon's customers will be if everyone's unemployed and AI and robots have taken all the middle class jobs... oppressive governments, I guess.
Great piece, and thanks for posting it.
I think that this type of thought about strengthening the middle class is possibly the most dangerous and verboten to the people with a radical utopian worldview who are looking for revolution. In a sense, it's probably more important to attack this than it is to attack billionaires. Massive inequality is a much preferable state for would-be revolutionaries than a stable middle class with centrist political views. Which only reinforces the author's point.
Making the relative comparison is useful in understanding what a shitshow is going on in the USA.
Back in the day, we used to think Abramovich was corrupt as fuck and very dodgy.
In 2026, I understand him to be a relative amateur ...
I am interests in learning more about the oligarchs involved, and the accounts, and the tax evasion, but I am not interested in reading the same comments about Trump I have heard countless times before. If anyone has something new to say about Trump I am happy to read about it where it is relevant to the topic being discussed.
An article like like this could be auto-generated with anybody's name.
I don’t want to defend anyone involved in the allegations, and don’t personally think they’re above shady business dealings, I just don’t like usual sensationalist “reporting” - essentially advertising like this and how people eat it up.