“Where were the lawyers and accountants?” That was the withering assessment of one US judge after years of fraud and deception went undetected during the 1980s savings and loan crisis, despite a well-stocked entourage of audit, legal and compliance professionals who might have been expected to raise the alarm.
It’s a relevant question once more as watchdogs try to crack down on a largely offshore and patchily-regulated cryptocurrency industry — worth $3 trillion at the peak — and as Binance and other platforms try to draw a line under the FTX scandal by appealing to the credibility of outside advisors. Wall Street’s top regulator is warning investors to be “wary” of how crypto firms promote the often narrow work done by accounting firms and is considering enforcement actions, according to the WSJ.
Source: FTX Scandal: Crypto Accountants and Lawyers Failed to Sound Alarm – Bloomberg
