Fresh questions have emerged from the audit trails of Rajesh Exports Ltd after documents reviewed by Mint showed that a limited-purpose, non-statutory opinion issued by KPMG Switzerland for Global Gold Refineries AG (GGR), the firm’s Swiss arm, was likely used to prepare the group’s consolidated financial statements. The opinion note was marked ‘for internal use only’. The matter raises questions over whether the group’s auditors in India and overseas had independently verified the group’s financials before signing off their reports.
The development comes in the backdrop of the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (Sebi) interim order of 3 June that pointed to irregularities in financial reporting and related party transactions of the company. Shares of the firm have fallen 11% since the regulator’s order. Sebi had said it could not independently verify over 98% of Rajesh Exports’ reported revenue. It is also noteworthy that the auditor of ACC Energy Storage Pvt. Ltd, the company’s battery unit, resigned citing regulatory issues: the end of a key certificate needed by Indian audit firms in this case, filings showed.
KPMG’s engagement letter for GGR in the year ended March 2025 had put in an explicit disclaimer. “Our opinion has been prepared at the request of the board of directors and does not represent a statutory audit opinion on the consolidated financial statements for the purpose of the Swiss Law. As a result, this consolidated statement may not be used for another purpose,” as per the firm’s private documents reviewed by Mint.
Antonella Pronzini, director, audit at KPMG Switzerland, was the partner who signed off on the non-statutory opinion. An email sent to Pronzini on the terms of the consulting firm’s engagement went unanswered until press time.
The observation, previously unreported, is important as , in its 3 June interim order, said it could not independently verify more than 98% of Rajesh Exports’ reported revenue. This was because Rajesh Exports does not disclose the financial break-up for its Singapore-based REL Singapore Pte Ltd, UAE-based Bab AL Rayan Jewellery LLC, and two Swiss firms, GGR and Valcambi.
“KPMG issued a special-purpose audit opinion stating that the report had been prepared at the request of the board and did not constitute a statutory audit opinion under Swiss law,” said Vinod K. Bansal, a Delhi-based independent practising chartered accountant. “Such restricted-use opinions are not uncommon in multinational groups and, by themselves, do not indicate any audit deficiency.”
“However, the financial statements covered by this special-purpose audit were ultimately used by Rajesh Exports while preparing its consolidated financial statements. The Singapore intermediate holding company did not prepare consolidated accounts, leaving the consolidation to Rajesh Exports in India,” Bansal said. “This shifts the focus to the responsibilities of the Indian group auditor. Under international group auditing standards, a parent company’s auditor can rely on component auditors or special-purpose audit reports, but the responsibility for obtaining sufficient and appropriate audit evidence over material subsidiaries ultimately rests with the group auditor,” said Bansal.
A second expert faulted KPMG Switzerland, which had given its audit opinion at the board’s behest.
“The auditor, in case of a standalone audit, cannot shed its responsibility of conducting a full check by basing its opinion on the word or request of the board of directors,” said Ved Jain, a former president of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.
“Investors rely on auditors to fully verify the financial statements to ensure there is no wrongdoing. In any case, a standalone firm’s auditor having made such an explicit disclaimer also puts the responsibility on the auditor of the parent firms in Singapore and India, because if there was such a remark by the auditor of the standalone audit, then they should have either done the audit of the Swiss firm themselves or asked someone else to do it.”
had been engaged by the board of Valcambi and its holding company GGR, Singapore-based Meridian Audit was the auditor for REL Singapore, while Rajesh Exports’ auditor was BSD & Co, a Bengaluru-based audit firm.
Rajesh Exports’ battery arm ACC Energy hired Bengaluru-based PV Ramana Reddy & Co, while Elest Pvt. Ltd, another EV-battery business that is 90% owned by promoter Rajesh Mehta, hired Price Waterhouse Chartered Accountants LLP (PwC).
Mehta still maintains that KPMG’s disclaimer had no significance and that the report was indeed a statutory audit. “There is no confusion and I can tell you that KPMG did the statutory audit of GGR” Mehta told Mint.
It is important to note that the question of whether KPMG indeed conducted a full statutory audit of GGR Switzerland mirrors a related issue at Rajesh Exports. GGR is owned by REL Singapore PTE, which is wholly-owned by Rajesh Exports.
REL Singapore obtained an exemption from Singapore’s regulator from filing consolidated financials, stating that the aggregation will be handled by Rajesh Exports in India. The firm filed its standalone financial statements only in Singapore, withholding the financials of other step-down subsidiaries of Rajesh Exports. However, Rajesh Exports told Sebi that it could not disclose the standalone financial statements of all its overseas subsidiaries, as the Singapore subsidiary had consolidated and shared them.
None of the auditors—KPMG, PWC, PV Ramana Reddy & Co and BSD & Co—made any qualifying remarks when auditing the gold refining business or the electric vehicle battery business, according to the financials of the four companies.
And the questions over audit oversight extend beyond the Swiss business.
ACC Energy’s auditor, PV Ramana Reddy & Co, resigned on 4 May, according to filings with the corporate affairs ministry, citing regulatory issues. “To sign the financial statement of a subsidiary company of a listed company with effect from 01-04-2026, the auditor should have the valid peer review certificate. Since my peer review certificate has expired, I am ineligible to sign your company’s financials,” PV Ramana Reddy wrote in his resignation letter.
Calls and emails to Ramana Reddy seeking comment on the matter went unanswered. To be sure, Reddy also served as Rajesh Exports’ statutory auditor between 2018 and 2021, before BSD took over.
The auditor’s resignation came a month before Sebi released its order in the Rajesh Exports case, but both Reddy and BSD had deposed before it in January regarding the company’s financials.
Still, Sebi’s interim report questioned many of the transactions undertaken by Rajesh Exports, ACC Energy and Elest.
As per Sebi’s order, between April 2020 and December 2025, about ₹566 crore was transferred by Rajesh Exports to Elest, which then transferred ₹350 crore back to Rajesh Exports in the same period, raising scrutiny from the regulator about what happened to the remaining ₹216 crore.
“Looking at the prima facie misconduct and dereliction of duties on the part of the statutory auditors, a copy of this order shall be forwarded to National Financial Reporting Authority for appropriate actions, if any, against the statutory auditors of REL,” said Sebi.
Mehta’s firm Elest was audited by two firms over the past five years, MSKA and PwC.
MSKA had flagged concern over Elest’s financials in its audit report. “Based on the significance of the matters described in the Disclaimer of opinion section of our report, we are unable to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence to provide a basis for an audit opinion on internal financial controls with reference to the financial statements of the company,” MSKA said in its audit report for financial year 2022.
Not long after, MSKA resigned as Elest’s auditor in May 2023, citing a reduction in professional fees, after which PwC joined. The new audit firm did not flag any issues for FY23 and FY24 and noted that the company had sufficient financial controls.
“Where substantial domestic and cross border transactions allegedly escaped timely scrutiny or were presented in a manner that did not reflect the underlying commercial reality, it is legitimate to examine whether the audit process discharged its gatekeeping function with the degree of professional scepticism expected under law,” said Sonam Chandwani, managing partner at KS Legal & Associates.
It is reasonable to examine whether existing audit procedures, risk assessments, and verification mechanisms were sufficiently robust, said Sindhuja Kashyap, partner at King Stubb & Kasiva, Advocates and Attorneys. “That said, the mere existence of regulatory findings does not automatically establish auditor misconduct,” Kashyap added.
Auditors PwC, MSKA, and BSD did not respond to emailed requests for comments.