"The fact that a formatting error caused an $8,000 loan balance...

"The fact that a formatting error caused an $8,000 loan balance to be shown as a $14 million balance - and that no one at the company or the auditors picked this up until six months after the accounts had been filed with ASIC and ASX - doesn't instill confidence in the precision applied to the rest. "

@Universal Exports, as a former auditor, do the auditors look at the actual literal statements to be published, or just the numbers that back them up (say in the form of excel spreadsheets or whatever accounting system is used)? If the latter, then I'd assume PwC would have nothing to do with the formatting error, as it happened in the published statement (presumably due to "copy and paste" issue) rather than in the actual accounting numbers backing it up?

More importantly, wouldn't the auditors look at the actual cash flows etc (bank statements, invoices, whatever) backing up the numbers in the income statements? If so (and I _hope_ that's the case), then wouldn't you say that relying on auditors (2 separate auditors very soon) to confirm that the rental income alleged to be inflated was in fact not inflated - is a pretty valid strategy?