{"id":769003,"date":"2026-06-30T02:53:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T02:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/769003\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T02:53:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T02:53:13","slug":"ernst-and-young-staff-allegedly-access-anthony-albaneses-private-banking-information","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/769003\/","title":{"rendered":"Ernst and Young staff allegedly access Anthony Albanese’s private banking information"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two Ernst and Young employees allegedly accessed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s personal banking information while working for the accounting firm at the Commonwealth Bank.<\/p>\n

The Australian Federal Police said the Sydney pair were charged with privacy offences in May after the bank allegedly identified that they accessed restricted information belonging to a federal politician.<\/p>\n

The men, aged 21 and 25, have been charged with a count each of accessing restricted data without authorisation.<\/p>\n

The younger man faces an additional charge of using a communications device to distribute personal information “in a way that reasonable persons would regard, in all the circumstances, as menacing or harassing towards those individuals”.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

EY has been approached for comment.\u00a0 (ABC News: John Gunn)<\/p>\n

Both men have since had their employment at Ernst and Young terminated following an investigation which was prompted by the irregular activity identified at the bank.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mr Albanese’s office declined to comment on the alleged breach.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said it was worrying for privacy breaches to occur within Australian Banks.<\/p>\n

“I think on the face of it, any developments of that kind are incredibly concerning, not just in relation to the PM’s details, but any Australian’s details,” Mr Chalmers said.<\/p>\n

“I assume that there are now legal and other processes to play out and I don’t want to get in the way of those.”<\/p>\n

Latest allegation of ‘Big 4’ wrongdoing<\/p>\n

Ernst and Young, also known as EY, is the latest of the so-called “Big 4” professional services firms to face allegations of wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

KPMG agreed to a three-month freeze on new federal government contracts amid a worsening scandal over the treatment of a whistleblower, which last week resulted in the resignation of chair Martin Sheppard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It followed revelations by the whistleblower about KPMG Australia’s misuse of confidential information belonging to its client Lendlease, which were revealed by federal parliament by Labor senator Deborah O’Neill in March.<\/p>\n

It follows the 2022 PWC scandal, when the company was found to have misused confidential government information to help multinational companies avoid tax after it was publicly disclosed in 2022.<\/p>\n

PWC currently does not bid for any federal government contracts due to a non-compete clause.<\/p>\n

Both men were granted bail and they are due to face Newtown Local Court today.<\/p>\n

Ernst and Young has declined to comment.<\/p>\n

A Commonwealth Bank spokesperson said, “It was not appropriate to comment on individual contractor matters”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two Ernst and Young employees allegedly accessed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s personal banking information while working for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":769004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2324,64,63,11452,8878,99,96,295865,42086,2457],"class_list":["post-769003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-anthony-albanese","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bank-account","tag-banking","tag-business","tag-commonwealth-bank","tag-ernst-and-young","tag-jim-chalmers","tag-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/769004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}