The bank audit committee of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) soon seeks to appeal to the Audit Chamber of Ukraine with a proposal to punish PricewaterhouseCoopers (audit) LLC (Kyiv, the Ukrainian structure of PwC) in the form of its removal from the register of audit firms and auditors, the press service of the central bank has told Interfax-Ukraine.

In addition, the NBU committee intends to initiate punishment of the auditors who personally conducted audit of the financial report of PrivatBank in the form of annulment of their bank auditor certificates.

"This request will be the next logical step after the decision approved by the NBU board on July 20, 2017 under a request of the committee to remove PricewaterhouseCoopers (audit) LLC from the register of audit firms that have the right to conduct audit of banks," the NBU said.

The central bank recalled that the rationale behind this decision was PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit LLC’s verification of misrepresented financial information in the financial statements of PrivatBank (Kyiv). In particular, this concerns information on credit exposure and regulatory capital reported by the bank.

The press service said that the bank audit committee was created by the NBU. It consists of representatives of the NBU, the Audit Chamber of Ukraine, the National Commission for Securities and the Stock Market and the National Commission for Financial Service Markets Regulation.