From Accounting Today:
In May, a Dutch court handed down fines over the Royal Ahold supermarket accounting fraud – which reached $30 billion. Investigations continue into Great Britain's Equitable Life Assurance Society (ELAS), where a policy scandal nearly brought down the 244-year-old institution.
ELAS made exorbitantly large payments to holders of its with-profits policies (an insurance contract that shares in the profits of the insurance company) and nearly collapsed in 2000. To remain solvent, the company was forced to cut the pensions and retirement savings of policy holders. More than 1 million policy holders in the U.K. and more than 15,000 in other EU countries incurred massive losses to their pensions, savings and investments.
Equitable Life launched a ₤4 billion legal action seeking ₤2 billion from 15 ex-directors whom it claimed were negligent, and demanding a similar sum from former auditor Ernst & Young, claiming that it signed off on the company's accounts without warning of the problems that led to its collapse.
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