Rio Tinto: where were the auditors?

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As the FT reports this morning:

Rio Tinto and two former senior executives were hit with US fraud charges, and the miner with a UK penalty, on Tuesday for allegedly trying to hide a multibillion-dollar business failure by inflating the value of coal assets in Mozambique.

In a civil complaint filed in federal court in New York, the Securities and Exchange Commission said that Rio, Tom Albanese, its former chief executive, and Guy Elliott, a former chief financial officer, had ignored proper accounting standards and misled investors in their valuation of coal deposits that the company had purchased for $3.7bn and later sold for just $50m.

As they also note:

In the UK, the company was fined £27.4m over the affair, the largest fine the Financial Conduct Authority has levied on a company for a listing-rules breach.

So, let' ask the obvious question: where were the auditors?

The allegations largely relate to 2012. The auditors then were PWC, as they are now.

The sums now subject to investigation must be material. So where is the investigation into the audit? I can find no evidence that there is one.

Why not?