After a whistleblower accused the McGladrey LLP auditing firm of spending millions on a dysfunctional BP Deepwater Horizon Settlement audit, the firm is apparently conducting an internal investigation.
McGladrey has hired a criminal defense attorney and has asked that their partner, Mark McNamee, who helped with the Deepwater Horizon audit stay away for the time being.
New York Attorney Sean Hecker with Debevoise & Plimpton LLP will conduct an investigation into the alleged accusations by the whistleblower, which claimed that McGladrey accounting firm hardly knew anything about the damage claims process, which is why they failed to produce an accurate audit.
In an email to BP officials, copied to the Louisiana Record, the whistleblower said McNamee “violated your trust in every way imaginable.”
“I am sorry to say that it has appeared to become a ‘feeding frenzy’ for all since 2010 and it is simply WRONG,” the whistleblower wrote in the email.
The whistleblower blamed McNamee for increasing the cost of the audit, taking it from $1.4 million to $14 million, ten times the original budget, and encouraging 75 employees to run up the cost of the audit.
Accordingly, the whistleblower said McNamee and executives at McGladrey had inappropriate friendships with Deepwater Horizon vendors and other individuals who could have possibly compromised McGladrey’s conflict of interest rules.
Neither McGladrey nor McNamee have commented on the matter.