Chinese units of the global "Big Four" accounting firms should be suspended from auditing U.S.-listed companies for six months, a judge in the United States ruled, in an escalation in a long-running dispute over regulators' access to documents. In a harshly worded 112-page ruling, Securities and Exchange Commission Administrative Law Judge Cameron Elliot censured the Chinese affiliates of KPMG, Deloitte & Touche, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst and Young. The four firms said that they intended to appeal against the ruling. "In the meantime the firms can and will continue to serve all their clients without interruption," the four said in a joint statement. Elliot, an SEC judge who operates independently, sided with the SEC and said the companies "willfully" failed to give U.S. regulators the audit work papers of certain Chinese companies under investigation for accounting fraud. Auditors have refused to turn over such papers for fear of violating Chinese secrecy laws. They argue
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