Armanino’s COO stated that his company “feels good” about its work for the exchange.
During an interview published by the Financial Times on December 23, a top Armanino executive defended auditing work performed for FTX.US.
Chris Carlberg, Armanino’s chief operating officer, stated that the company was confident in the quality of its services to the FTX American branch.
According to Carlberg:
“We definitely stand by the FTX US work. A few industry voices have said that we should have done a better job auditing internal controls, but we were never engaged to audit internal controls.”
He explained that those auditing practices are required for public company audits but not for private company audits such as FTX.US. He stated that the company performed the required level of analysis and that Armanino and its employees “feel good about the work we did in that area.”
Carlberg also distanced Armanino from FTX’s international business, saying the firm “never had a client relationship” with it or related companies.
He also confirmed that Armanino would no longer provide financial statement audits and proof-of-reserve reports to cryptocurrency firms. Unverified sources first revealed the news in a Forbes interview published last week.
Carlberg, on the other hand, suggested that the company’s decision to discontinue services was due to market conditions. Previously, it was assumed that Armanino would drop crypto clients due to reputational risk. Customers of FTX have filed a class action lawsuit against Armanino and Prager Metis.
According to reports around December 17, Armanino, along with Mazars and BDO, is one of three auditing firms expected to stop providing services to crypto companies.
