This is the most severe penalty ever imposed on international accounting firms operating in China.
The company will be prohibited from signing any financial results in the country for 6 months.
The company has already started losing customers.
China’s finance ministry said in a statement on Friday that it had imposed fines of 116 million yuan ($16.35 million) on PwC, confiscated its illegal profits, suspended its operations for six months, dissolved the company’s Guangzhou branch and issued an administrative warning.
A separate regulator, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, also imposed fines and confiscations totaling 325 million yuan ($45.8 million) on the company for allegedly failing to conduct due diligence in auditing Evergrande’s accounts.
The audit firm was audited by Beijing in January, following the collapse of Evergrandethe world’s most indebted property developer, and a symbol of China’s ongoing property crisis.
The Securities and Exchange Commission said in China In March, Evergrande said it had inflated its revenue in mainland China by about $80 billion in 2019 and 2020.
In May, authorities fined the company $577 million.
PwC has been auditing Evergrande for 14 years until 2023 and has awarded it a safety certificate.
PricewaterhouseCoopers was the largest of the “Big Four” accounting firms operating in China, taking in nearly 8 billion yuan ($1.1 billion) in revenue in 2022, outpacing rivals Deloitte, KPMG and EY, according to the China Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
China has clamped down on excessive borrowing by property developers during a prolonged property slump that has affected other sectors of the economy including construction, building materials and home appliances.
