the UK has been sued for more than £6 million (~€6.9 million, ~US$7.8 million) by property company Mount Anvil which claims it was left with an unexpected tax bill after the firm provided it with negligent advice. In July, the UK accounting regulator Financial Reporting Council (FRC) criticised KPMG for its "unacceptable" failure to meet required standards in its audits of banks for a third year running. Only 61% of KPMG’s audits sampled by the regulator met industry standards. The Government of Malaysia and the state sovereign fund, 1MDB, launched a lawsuit seeking over $5.6 billion in damages from KPMG partners for alleged breaches and negligence linked to a corruption scandal at the fund. South Africa's largest asset manager, the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) sued KPMG for 144 million rand (~U$9.5 million) it lost when the VBS Mutual Bank went bankrupt as a result of fraud. Its claim is centred on the rights issue and a revolving credit facility it participated in at VBS relying on financial statements audited by KPMG and its former senior partner, Sipho Malaba. In August, a tribunal convened by the UK regulator, FRC, fined KPMG £13m and ordered it to pay £2.75m in costs. This was because of its serious misconduct in the sale of bed company Silentnight. The tribunal found that KPMG had helped private equity group H.I.G Capital drive Silentnight into an insolvency process, so that HIG could acquire the company without its £100m pension scheme. KPMG was severely reprimanded by the tribunal, and was ordered to appoint an independent reviewer to check a sample of previous cases for similar failings. The tribunal ruled that KPMG's involvement with Silentnight was "deeply troubling" as it failed to act solely in its client's interests. In September, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board fined KPMG Australia $450,000 after it confessed to a cheating scandal involving over 1,100 (almost 12%) of its employees. In October, UK regulator The Financial Reporting Council (FRC), said KPMG and David Costley-Wood, a partner at the firm, used an "untruthful defence" in an investigation into the sale of Silentnight to a private equity firm in 2011. Costley-Wood, who was formerly head of KPMG’s Manchester restructuring division, was also fined £500,000 and barred from insolvency or accountancy licences for 13 years. In November, a British litigation financing firm—Augusta Ventures announced that it will bankroll three $152.4-million lawsuits in Canada against the previous auditor