The The five firms are BDO China Dahua Co. Ltd; Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Certified Public Accountants Ltd; Ernst & Young Hua Ming LLP; KPMG Huazhen (Special General Partnership); and PricewaterhouseCoopers Zhong Tian CPAs Limited. Audit materials are being sought in an investigation into potential wrongdoing by nine China-based companies whose stock trades in American securities markets.
An administrative law judge will schedule a hearing to determine appropriate sanction against the firms. Under the SEC order, the judge must issue an initial decision no later than 300 days from the date of service of the order.