The four biggest accountancy firms operating in the Netherlands have been fined a total of €6m by the financial services regulator AFM.

The fines follow an earlier investigation by the AFM which said Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC did not achieve the required duty of care and were lax in checking corporate accounts in 2012 and 2011.

In many of these cases, the accountant had already provided a final statement before receiving all the necessary information from the client. This is against the law, the regulator says.

The biggest fine – €2.2m, went to EY.