KPMG Australia’s former chief operating officer, Eileen Hoggett, is suing the firm after she was sacked for storing printed copies of confidential Lendlease board documents in her locker, sharing them with her colleagues to win audit contracts, and repeatedly denying it.
Hoggett has launched her legal action against KPMG in the Supreme Court of NSW. She has lodged an application for preliminary discovery after previously expressing frustration about the stripping of her entitlements.
Advertisement
Ex-KPMG executive sues firm after being sacked over audit scandal
Updated Sep 3, 2026 – 2.18pm,first published at 10.51amSave
Add us as a preferred source on Google
Listen to this article
5 min
KPMG Australia’s former chief operating officer, Eileen Hoggett, is suing the firm after she was sacked for storing printed copies of confidential Lendlease board documents in her locker, sharing them with her colleagues to win audit contracts, and repeatedly denying it.
Hoggett has launched her legal action against KPMG in the Supreme Court of NSW. She has lodged an application for preliminary discovery after previously expressing frustration about the stripping of her entitlements.
KPMG’s new chief executive John Sams briefed partners on a call in July and told staff that the firm had uncovered an email in which Hoggett referred to keeping a printout of the documents in her locker and sharing them.
The documents contained commercially sensitive audit bids from EY and PwC, and were used by her and other partners to help KPMG win work.
“I was out walking one morning and I received a call from the CEO, who advised that I was being expelled. I asked to understand the rationale and the reason for that, because that is unprecedented; it’s something that’s never occurred in our partnership before,” Hoggett told a parliamentary committee last month.
“I was told that it was a basis of an email that had been found in the week or so leading up to that, and I didn’t have the opportunity to have a discussion. Probably 20 minutes after that phone call, a letter of expulsion was served to my lawyer and a copy couriered to my home.” KPMG has been in crisis since a former employee alleged that the firm’s auditors had misused client data from some of the country’s biggest companies and had used insider information to win auditing work.
The scandal has led to the resignation of several senior executives, including former chief executive Andrew Yates, former chairman Martin Sheppard and senior auditors Paul Rogers, Kim Lawry, Julian McPherson, and Hoggett. Hoggett said she could not recall storing confidential Lendlease documents in her locker and expressed confusion about her firing when she appeared before the joint parliamentary committee on corporations and financial services, at its KPMG ethics and accountability public hearing last month.
KPMG has been contacted for comment. Hoggett and her lawyer Bryan Belling declined to comment.Under the firm’s generous retirement scheme, which is also referred to as its “good leaver” policy, long-serving partners are entitled to a one-off sum equal to one-fifth of the partner’s total earnings over their final five years when they depart.
Under the firm’s partnership deed, long-standing equity partners asked to leave by the chief executive, with board approval, get a “discretionary retirement payment” worth nine months of their final year’s salary.
When annual leave is also accounted for, the cumulative value of the payments for Hoggett would have been in the millions of dollars.
“Expulsion is something that’s unprecedented, so it was new to me. Expulsion means that I get no entitlements,” Hoggett told the committee.
“I don’t get my accrued annual leave. I don’t get the retirement payment, which I contributed to as a partner for 21 years. I did not get paid for the last month up to the date of my expulsion, so it’s a significant financial penalty.”
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission is currently investigating “suspected misconduct” by Hoggett and a number of other KPMG auditors concerning their handling of confidential client information.
Advertisement
Ex-KPMG executive sues firm after being sacked over audit scandal
Updated Sep 3, 2026 – 2.18pm,first published at 10.51amSave
Add us as a preferred source on Google
Listen to this article
5 min
KPMG Australia’s former chief operating officer, Eileen Hoggett, is suing the firm after she was sacked for storing printed copies of confidential Lendlease board documents in her locker, sharing them with her colleagues to win audit contracts, and repeatedly denying it.
Hoggett has launched her legal action against KPMG in the Supreme Court of NSW. She has lodged an application for preliminary discovery after previously expressing frustration about the stripping of her entitlements.
KPMG’s new chief executive John Sams briefed partners on a call in July and told staff that the firm had uncovered an email in which Hoggett referred to keeping a printout of the documents in her locker and sharing them.
The documents contained commercially sensitive audit bids from EY and PwC, and were used by her and other partners to help KPMG win work.
“I was out walking one morning and I received a call from the CEO, who advised that I was being expelled. I asked to understand the rationale and the reason for that, because that is unprecedented; it’s something that’s never occurred in our partnership before,” Hoggett told a parliamentary committee last month.
“I was told that it was a basis of an email that had been found in the week or so leading up to that, and I didn’t have the opportunity to have a discussion. Probably 20 minutes after that phone call, a letter of expulsion was served to my lawyer and a copy couriered to my home.”
KPMG has been in crisis since a former employee alleged that the firm’s auditors had misused client data from some of the country’s biggest companies and had used insider information to win auditing work.
The scandal has led to the resignation of several senior executives, including former chief executive Andrew Yates, former chairman Martin Sheppard and senior auditors Paul Rogers, Kim Lawry, Julian McPherson, and Hoggett.
Hoggett said she could not recall storing confidential Lendlease documents in her locker and expressed confusion about her firing when she appeared before the joint parliamentary committee on corporations and financial services, at its KPMG ethics and accountability public hearing last month.
KPMG has been contacted for comment. Hoggett and her lawyer Bryan Belling declined to comment.
Under the firm’s generous retirement scheme, which is also referred to as its “good leaver” policy, long-serving partners are entitled to a one-off sum equal to one-fifth of the partner’s total earnings over their final five years when they depart.
Under the firm’s partnership deed, long-standing equity partners asked to leave by the chief executive, with board approval, get a “discretionary retirement payment” worth nine months of their final year’s salary.
When annual leave is also accounted for, the cumulative value of the payments for Hoggett would have been in the millions of dollars.
“Expulsion is something that’s unprecedented, so it was new to me. Expulsion means that I get no entitlements,” Hoggett told the committee.
“I don’t get my accrued annual leave. I don’t get the retirement payment, which I contributed to as a partner for 21 years. I did not get paid for the last month up to the date of my expulsion, so it’s a significant financial penalty.”
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission is currently investigating “suspected misconduct” by Hoggett and a number of other KPMG auditors concerning their handling of confidential client information.
In a submission to the committee published on Thursday, ASIC said that this probe was “well progressed, although the scope may evolve as further information is obtained and assessed”.
ASIC revealed it was also investigating whether KPMG made false or misleading statements in the transparency reports audit firms are legally required to lodge with the watchdog, which detail potential misconduct and complaints internally. The corporate regulator is making “initial inquiries” into the basis of statements made by KPMG in its 2025 report, including that it had not received any whistleblower complaints related to audit quality.
This comes in addition to ASIC’s investigations into whether KPMG’s treatment of the internal whistleblower who first raised concerns about the misconduct breached the Corporations Act.
ASIC said it was also looking more broadly at internal complaints about audit quality at the big four accounting firms, and that it had increased its scrutiny of how they handled conflicts of interest. It told the committee it wanted greater powers to regulate these firms.
