The head of China?s largest credit rating agency has accused his Western rivals of causing the financial crisis and becoming too close to the clients they were assessing, a report said Thursday.

“The financial crisis was caused because rating agencies didn?t properly disclose risk,” Guan Jianzhong, chairman of Dagong Global Credit Rating, told the Financial Times in an interview.

“This brought the entire US financial system to the verge of collapse, causing huge damage to the US and its strategic interests.”