of one year after discovering major financial and accounting irregularities in the entities' records. In December, KPMG South Africa published an open apology for its participation in various scandals in South Africa, including publishing a misleading report that led to the resignation of the South African Finance Minister, involvement with the Gupta family who have been implicated in corruption scandal with former President, Jacob Zuma, and acting as the auditor of VBS Mutual Bank that collapsed due to fraud. Its top eight staff resigned during 2017 and its workforce shrank from 3,400 to 2,200. 2019 KPMG were fined £5 million by the Financial Reporting Council for misconduct shortly after the takeover of the Britannia Building Society by The Co-operative Bank, particularly relating to the valuation of Britannia's commercial loans and other liabilities. The takeover led to the near collapse of The Co-operative Bank. KPMG was fined £6 million by the Financial Reporting Council following a long running investigation by the regulator into misconduct in the firm’s auditing of Lloyds Syndicate 218 between 2007 & 2009. KPMG partner Mark Taylor has been fined £100,000, severely reprimanded and agreed to the imposition of a requirement to have a second partner review of his audits until the end of 2020. KPMG was fined $50 million by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for illicit use of PCAOB data and cheating on training exams. 2020 During April, KPMG UK was fined £455,000 and a senior partner, Nicola Quayle, was fined £29,250 by the UK accounting regulator, Financial Regulation Council for failing to challenge what a client was telling them about certain complex supplier arrangements. In June, KPMG resigned from the auditor role at British fashion firm, Ted Baker plc after the company admitted accounting errors resulting in overstatement of its inventory by up to £58 million. 2021 In February, the liquidators for South African bank, VBS Mutual Bank, sued KPMG for 863.5 million rand (~US$59 million) over its audit opinion on the now defunct bank. In March, KPMG US agreed to pay $10 million to settle a 10-year gender discrimination lawsuit in a New York Federal Court that alleged claims by 450 women that its culture was rife with gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and retaliation. During May, members of the Canadian Parliament's House of Commons finance committee re-launched a probe into offshore tax evasion by interviewing Lucia Iacovelli, managing partner at KPMG. KPMG in