The US Securities and Exchange Commission has charged the Chinese affiliates of five leading accounting firms with violating securities laws for refusing to produce paperwork related to investigations into accounting fraud at Chinese companies.

The Chinese affiliates of Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG, PwC and BDO were charged with violating the US Securities Exchange Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The laws require foreign public accounting firms to provide the SEC with paperwork involving any US-traded company, the SEC said in a statement.

SEC investigators have been probing potential wrongdoing by nine Chinese companies whose shares are traded on US markets, the SEC said, and the accounting companies have refused to co-operate with those investigations. Regulators did not name the nine companies being examined.