Deloitte Israel missed a major fraud at Tingo: Hindenburg
New Jersey-based firm paid over $1.5 mn to its auditors
PTI
New Delhi: Issues in Tingo’s financials are glaring enough that we’d expect they could have been spotted by any semi-conscious finance undergrad with severe vision loss, Hindenburg Research had said in a report last year. “These issues were apparently not glaring enough for the company’s auditor, however,” the report said.
In October 2022, Tingo’s auditor, Friedman LLP resigned. In Friedman’s place stepped Brightman Almagor Zohar & Co., a firm in the Deloitte global network. The Israeli-based audit office is an odd choice given that Tingo has no signs of substantive operations in Israel. In its 2022 audit, Deloitte Israel gave Tingo an unqualified audit opinion, the report said. For 2022, Tingo disclosed that it paid over $1.5 million to its auditors for audit related fees including its annual audit and reviews of quarterly reports.
Given the obvious errors, we suspect Deloitte Israel missed or rushed through procedures that would have uncovered important findings, Hindenburg Research said. “We think Tingo is a brazen fraud that should serve as a humiliating embarrassment for all involved,” the report said.
Tingo, headquartered in New Jersey, claims to have several business segments focused on providing mobile phones, food processing and an online food marketplace for farmers primarily located in Nigeria.
