KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 19): Messrs Chengco PLT (formerly known as Cheng & Co) and its partners have been barred by the Securities Commission Malaysia’s (SC) Audit Oversight Board (AOB) from accepting public interest entities (PIEs) or schedule funds as clients and from auditing their financial statements for 12 months.

This followed the dismissal of Hong, Liew and Yap's appeal against the AOB’s decisions to prohibit the firm, Hong and Liew on Aug 6.

In a statement today, the AOB said the firm and its partners concerned were found to have multiple instances of non-compliance with the international auditing standards, which were discovered in two inspections conducted by the AOB in 2016 and 2018 respectively.

The AOB also noted that the firm had failed to remedy a recurring finding identified in the first inspection.

"As a result, the firm and the partners, Hong Thuan Boon and Liew Kwai Choy, were prohibited from accepting PIEs or schedule funds as clients and auditing their financial statements for 12 months," it added.

Hong and Liew were engagement partner and engagement quality control reviewer respectively, for the audit.

The firm was also fined RM175,000, while Hong was fined RM57,000.

Another of the firm’s partner, Yap Peng Boon, was also fined RM44,000 for non-compliance of audit procedures.

Chengco’s listed clients include Smile-Link Healthcare Global Bhd, Kawan Food Bhd, PNE PCB Bhd, YGL Convergence Bhd and M3 Technologies (Asia) Bhd.