On July 13, 2021, The Pioneer, an Indian newspaper broke the story of the victimization of my witness. That detailed story also proved beyond doubt that my ethics concerns were all genuine, but Deloitte India’s ethics team had dismissed them as unsubstantiated. After this story was published I wrote another email to the Deloitte’s Global Ethics Officer. This email was sent on July 14, but I have not received any response from them as on date.
Here is the text of the email:
Ms Tsang,
Kindly refer to the email trail below regarding suppression of my ethics concerns that I had raised pertaining to Deloitte India. The Deloitte India ethics team did not take any action in this matter, and closed them. It was not only I who paid the price for blowing the whistle, my witness faced dire consequences.
When I had escalated this matter to you at a global level few months back, you assigned it back to Deloitte India ethics team, which did not waste a single second in dismissing my complaints once again on the grounds that the complaints were unsubstantiated, and also claimed innocence regading my harassment and leaking of the identity of my witness. It also pleaded ignorance of the coercive action against the witness.
I had provided you a detailed rebuttal of the “closure report” of the Deloitte India ethics team. Just recently a story has appeared in a newspaper publication in India, which more than substantiates my ethics concerns and particularly my complaint against the Deloitte India ethics team. I am including the link for the online version of the story:
I hope that after reading this news story, there shall be no doubt left regarding my ethics concerns and complaint against Deloitte India ethics team. The following ought to be looked at by Deloitte:
1. One of the partners reported in my ethics concerns, namely Ms. Shefali Goradia continues in the Deloitte India partnership.
2. Deloitte India has still not disclosed its conflict of interest w.r.t. IL&FS that I had raised in my ethics concern no. 2.
3. The manner in which Deloitte India Ethics program is being run, needs to be audited. The ethics of the Ethics team is itself suspect, and there is absolutely no whistleblower/witness protection or maintaining of confidentiality of their idenity. In this specific case, there needs to be a thorough probe of the entire interaction between Deloitte India (ethics team) and the law firm Nishith Desai Associates.
I hope Deloitte Global will take this seriously. Otherwise, I will be constrained to take it up on a different forum outside Deloitte.
Links:
- The news story in The Pioneer titled India’s ‘Panama Papers’ on shell firms, tax loopholes gather dust
- First story: How I was screwed by Deloitte India’s Ethics Team
