King & King, a two-office London audit firm, has been fined £378,184 and banned from auditing public interest companies for five years over serious audit failures at companies within Sanjeev Gupta's business empire. Managing partner Milan Patel received a £326,184 fine and a three-year ban from statutory audit work. The Financial Reporting Council found the firm committed "pervasive breaches" across all audits examined.

The watchdog's four-year investigation revealed that King & King failed to identify clear self-interest threats arising from their heavy reliance on GFG Alliance entities. Patel's firm generated more than 40 per cent of its revenue in 2021 from Gupta's companies, far exceeding the 15 per cent cap for single-client dependency. These violations compromised audit independence and objectivity, with auditors unable to perform their duties without bias.

The sanctions stem from audits conducted in 2019 and 2020, before the 2021 collapse of Greensill Capital - Gupta's main lender that became embroiled in a financial and political scandal involving former Prime Minister David Cameron. Gupta's industrial empire, which once employed 35,000 people across steel, aluminium and energy businesses, has been unravelling amid mounting legal issues. The Serious Fraud Office opened an investigation into GFG Alliance that same year.

The FRC has tightened rules requiring fee caps to apply to collections of entities with the same beneficial owner, not just single companies. This case exposes the risks of concentrated audit relationships and inadequate oversight of complex corporate structures that rely on multiple small audit firms without consolidated financial reporting.