McHenry Requests Documents Regarding SEC’s Politically Motivated Action to Overhaul the PCAOB
Secures Release of Taxpayer-Funded Report on PCAOB Governance Issues
Washington,
June 29, 2021 -
The top Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, Patrick McHenry (NC-10), sent letters to the Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (
SEC), Gary Gensler, and the Acting Chair of the Public Companies Accounting Oversight Board (
PCAOB), Duane DesParte. In the letters, Republican Leader McHenry requests specific documents and communications regarding the SEC’s politically motivated action to terminate former PCAOB Chair William Duhnke and replace the entire Board.
The letters follow the
announcement of an investigation by Financial Services Committee Republicans into the matter earlier this month. In his previous letters, Republican Leader McHenry pushed for, and successfully secured, the release of a
report prepared by Kalorama Legal Services (KLS) on PCAOB governance issues during the period from January 2018 to December 2020.
Read Republican Leader McHenry’s letter to the PCAOB here and the SEC here.
Read the KLS report here.
Republican Leader McHenry writes: “Documents and evidence show the vast majority of the Board’s actions pursuant to its mandate to reform the PCAOB were unanimous and bipartisan. It is therefore unclear how the SEC’s partisan vote to remove Duhnke and replace the entire Board offers the PCAOB ‘an opportunity to live up to Congress’s vision in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act,’ as SEC Chairman Gary Gensler stated in a June 4, 2021 press release announcing the decision. Indeed, Congress did not envision the PCAOB co-opted by partisans at the SEC.
…
“To date, the available evidence neither supports the SEC’s partisan vote to overhaul the PCAOB nor dispels the appearance of a political motivation for the Commission’s recent actions.”
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