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Accounting News Roundup: Tax-plagued McCaskill Will ‘Sell the damn plane’; Deloitte Sued Over China MediaExpress; KPMG Names New Head in Memphis | 03.22.11

U.S. Warplane Crashes in Libya; Pilots Safe [WSJ]
A U.S. warplane crashed in a field in northeast Libya Tuesday, but the two crew members ejected safely, U.S. military officials. The U.S. F-15 Eagle was the first to warplane to crash since the start of military operations on Saturday, and officials said they didn’t believe the crash was caused by enemy fire.

Claire McCaskill failed to pay taxes on aircraft [Politico]
he Missouri Democrat has tried to be proactive in dealing with the matter. When contacted initially about the propriety of taxpayer-funded reimbursements for the 89 flights, McCaskill voluntarily issued a check to the Treasury Department to cover the cost of the trips. Yet there remained questions about whether McCaskill and her husband had fully paid property taxes on the plane. McCaskill called a Monday press conference after POLITICO had been pressing her for several days over that issue. “I have convinced my husband to sell the damn plane,” McCaskill said. “I will never set foot on the plane again.”

Greenberg’s Starr Investments sues China MediaExpress [Reuters]
Starr Investments, a firm run by former AIG chief Maurice Greenberg, has sued China MediaExpress Holdings , saying it was fraudulently induced to invest about $13.5 million in the firm, court documents show. Starr has also sued China MediaExpress auditor Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. The investment firm said the auditor had resigned as “it was no longer able to rely on the representations of the management.”

Charlie Sheen, out of work, faces tax issues [AW]
Taxes never kept anyone from winning! DUH.

Regulating Audit Firms: News and a Short Wishlist [Fraudbytes]
Dr. Mark Zimbleman has some ideas on how to take the heat off auditors including an idea on the litigation front, “if auditors were simply penalized for missing a fraud and no litigation process took place, they would be more vigilant. In other words, audit penalties would not be based on whether or not you could show you followed the required process, but whether or not you had the right outcome.”

Will Auditors Be Held Accountable? The PCAOB Has A Plan [Re:The Auditors]
Francine McKenna goes through last week’s recommendations from the IAG.


Barnes named to lead KPMG in Memphis [MBJ]
Greg Barnes takes the big chair from Matt Lusco.

Barry Bonds Steroids Perjury Trial to Open Before Jury of 8 Women, 4 Men [Bloomberg]
Barry Bonds’s perjury trial, to be heard by an eight-woman, four-man jury that includes a data center engineer at Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), two nurses and a business college student, is scheduled for opening statements today. Bonds, 46, who holds Major League Baseball records for career and single-season home runs, faces four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice for telling a 2003 grand jury he didn’t knowingly take performance-enhancing drugs. The trial in federal court in San Francisco is expected to last as long as four weeks.

Posted in ANR