Two graduate workers have been sacked and are facing criminal charges after allegedly accessing the Prime Minister’s banking details.It is understood the workers, aged 21 and 25, were grads employed by consultancy giant Ernst and Young and were on secondment at Commonwealth Bank when they allegedly used the bank’s systems to access the personal banking details of Anthony Albanese and at least one senior EY partner.The consultancy firm took on a new cohort of graduates in March and deployed dozens of junior staff members to consult on CBA’s technology systems.It was during this secondment that the two grads allegedly accessed the banking details.On May 6, the Australian Federal Police charged two young men with accessing restricted personal banking data belonging to a federal parliamentarian.A 21-year-old man faces a criminal charge of unauthorised access to, or modification of restricted data, and also “using a carriage service to make available, publish or otherwise distribute information that is personal data, of one or more individuals, and engaged in that conduct in a way that reasonable persons would regard, in all the circumstances, as menacing or harassing towards those individuals,” an AFP spokeswoman said.A 25-year-old man was also charged with one count of unauthorised access to restricted data. Both men will appear in the Newtown Local Court on Tuesday. The AFP said that as the matter was before the court, it would make no further comment.EY trains staff how to handle confidential data and, for those on secondment, how to meet the bank’s privacy obligations.The training tells them accounts should be accessed only for genuine work purposes, and they should not access any record out of curiosity. The firm’s contractors provided with access to sensitive systems within the bank are required to undergo further training.A worker at EY told news.com.au that staff have not yet been widely informed about the incident. Separate unnamed sources told the AFR the two former EY employees deployed to CBA would have been given a system warning that required them to confirm that they were permitted to access a bank customer’s confidential information. Once they agreed that they were authorised, the system granted them access to personal bank details.CBA. which monitors all access to sensitive data and alerted EY to the breach, told news.com.au: “It is not appropriate for us to comment on individual contractor matters.”The Prime Minister has a mortgage with CBA for his Copacabana property, that he bought with his partner Jodie Hayden, the members’ interest register and property title show.News.com.au has reached out to EY and the Prime Minister’s office for comment.Corporate giant hit by major scandalEY is not the first consultancy giant to make headlines this year as a major scandal has rocked one of its biggest competitors, fellow big four firm KPMG.At the end of May, KPMG was rocked by two senior resignations over how the firm handled a whistleblower’s complaints. The firm’s chief executive Andrew Yates and former head of audit Julian McPherson have resigned, while Eileen Hoggett has stepped down from her leadership role as chief operating officer. Last week, KPMG Australia chairman Martin Sheppard became the latest executive to quit as the misconduct scandal is put under the spotlight.What is the scandal all about?KPMG is under the pump after a whistleblower’s allegations that partners used confidential client data to win corporate audit contracts.Companies like KPMG act as independent, outside accounting checkers that big corporations use to dig through their financial books and verify that they are telling the truth to the public and investors.An audit contract is simply the official business agreement between the corporation and the accounting firm.The corporation agrees to pay the accounting firm (which is often in the millions of dollars), and the accounting firm agrees to do the financial check-up. Because these contracts are incredibly lucrative, accounting firms compete fiercely to win them. The whistleblower – a former audit director – claims that some top bosses (partners) at KPMG bent the rules to win one of these lucrative contracts. None of the individuals identified in this story is personally accused of involvement in any wrongdoing.They made a formal disclosure in May 2024 alleging that some partners misused confidential Lendlease (a real estate company) board papers to pitch for and win the external corporate audits for Westpac and Dexus (a major Australian real asset group).It is also alleged that inside information was used to secure lucrative work from Macquarie Group and Westpac.Instead of protecting the whistleblower or properly investigating the claims, the firm allegedly spent over two years covering up the scandal.The whistleblower claims the company tried to bury the truth by downplaying the serious allegations as a minor internal workplace dispute, using legal confidentiality loopholes and gag orders to keep it secret, and launching retaliatory actions against them for speaking up.It came to a head in March this year when Labor senator Deborah O’Neill used parliamentary privilege to disclose the allegations.The following day, she announced the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services, which she chairs, would hold a public hearing on June 19.KPMG has apologised to the whistleblower and ordered a fourth investigation into the matter. However, the review will be conducted by Allens, the exact same law firm that previously dismissed most of the whistleblower’s allegations.The big concern is that sharing private client data was just a normal part of KPMG’s workplace culture, even if the information itself wasn’t secret or worth a lot of money.The KPMG board said the firm had “fallen short” in how the whistleblower and their concerns were handled, how the investigations were carried out and how leadership reacted to the allegations.Chairman steps downKPMG announced Mr Sheppard’s exit among sweeping changes to “address identified failings, improve oversight and controls, and begin the work of rebuilding confidence in the firm”.He will be replaced by an independent chair – the first in the company’s history.“The decisions announced today are necessary and immediate,” interim chief executive Stan Stavros said in a statement.“We did not meet the standards expected of us, and we recognise the impact this has had on the whistleblower, our people, our clients and the community.“We are acting where it matters: changing leadership, strengthening independent governance, commissioning external reviews, improving whistleblower oversight, tightening controls and reinforcing accountability across the firm.“Trust will only be rebuilt through sustained action and demonstrable change.”He added that KPMG was “determined to confront what went wrong, act transparently and ensure these failings are not repeated”.The changes announced on Tuesday last week included an “immediate external lessons-learned review into the whistleblower matter and related failings”, and an “action plan focused on governance, culture and ethics, and controls”.Do you know more? Email Benjamin.graham@news.com.au