PwC faces six-month China ban and record fine over alleged auditing mistakes at Evergrande

PwC's Chinese auditing arm, PwC Zhong Tian, has been penalized by Chinese authorities for its role in auditing Evergrande, a collapsed property developer. The penalties include a six-month business suspension and fines totaling over $62 million. The Ministry of Finance also confiscated the company's revenue from the Evergrande audit. This is the harshest penalty imposed on an audit firm by Beijing, and the toughest penalty yet for a Big Four accounting firm in China. The Ministry of Finance stated that PwC failed to identify Evergrande's overstated sales of almost $80 billion between 2018 and 2020, citing "severe flaws" in the auditing work that led to "many false conclusions".