Forensic investigation confirms that no accounting fraud existed with Grupo SURA and its agreements with co-investors

Relevant information

In compliance with current relevant information reporting requirements,  Grupo de Inversiones Suramericana S.A. (Grupo SURA)  hereby announces the following:

  • Grupo SURA´s Audit and Finance Committee as well as its Board of Directors received on February 8, 2023 the final report from the forensic auditing firm Kroll Associates Colombia

S.A.S. (Kroll), after a forensic audit was carried out in response to a complaint from a member of the Board of Directors, based on an alleged accounting fraud regarding the disclosure and accounting treatment of contractual agreements entered into with co-investors.

  • After scrutinizing the Company's business practices over the past 12 years with regard to contracts entered into with co-investors, Kroll did not find any evidence of an alleged accounting fraud, nor the concealing of any contracts entered into with Grupo SURA's strategic partners as applicable to SURA Asset Management and Suramericana, from either the market, the Colombian Superintendency of Finance or any of the firms that have provided their statutory auditing services in the aforementioned period, which specifically includes the firm Ernst & Young Audit S.A.S. (EY).
  • This independent investigation consisted of interviews to gain greater understanding as well as confronting Grupo SURA´s employees and former employees; historical documentary analysis of minutes of meetings and presentations on the part of the Board of Directors and its Audit and Finance Committee; digital forensic analyses of computers and mailboxes belonging to the Company; documentary analyses of digitally stored information as well as direct interviews with the firm Ernst & Young (EY), together with communications with KPMG, both firms that have been in charge of Grupo SURA´s statutory auditing function since 2010.
  • Kroll (https://www.kroll.com) is one of the world's leading providers of professional services and digital products relating to valuations, corporate governance solutions, risk management and promoting transparency, with more than 100 years on the market and boosted with the expertise of the Duff & Phelps brand.
  • Kroll's investigation was preceded by several months of work in which third-party assessments of accounting practices were conducted (Price Waterhouse Coopers-PwC and CPA Wilmar Franco, former Chairman of the Technical Council of Public Accountants of Colombia). Based on these evaluations, the statutory auditing firm (Ernst & Young -EY) and the Company's Audit and Finance Committee concluded that the recognition, measurement, presentation and accounting disclosure of all those transactions entered into with strategic partners in the Separate and Consolidated Financial Statements complied with applicable standards at all times, as well as the recommendations of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), the highest global authority in interpreting accounting standards.
  • It should be recalled that since last November, Grupo SURA's Management informed the market about the analysis and applied adjustments made to the accounting policy and practice upheld with the separate and consolidated financial statements of shareholder agreements for the purchase of non-controlling interests.

After learning of the final report of the forensic audit performed by Kroll, the majority of the Board of Directors authorized its findings to be communicated to the market; the Directors María Ximena Lombana, Ángela María Tafur and Gabriel Gilinski voted against such communication.