Big 4 China Outfits|Fined $2 Million

WASHINGTON (CN) - Chinese-based offices of Big Four accounting firms will pay $500,000 apiece for refusing to turn over documents for fraud investigations, the SEC said Friday.

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young Hua Ming, KPMG Huazhen, and PricewaterhouseCoopers Zhong Tian "willfully refused" to provide the SEC with documents from their audits for nine China-based companies that had securities registered in the United States, the SEC said.

That violated the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which requires foreign public accounting firms to provide such documents to the SEC upon request.

Each defendant will pay $500,000 and must "perform specific steps" for the agency, the SEC said.

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