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Not sure of the full facts of the case - but an accountant not wanting to work over financial year end (usually jan/feb) should find another job. Should they get time to decompress before/afterwards - yes.

The Financial year end is actually usually the end of March, which is basically historical because when everybody else changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calandar the tax authorities refused to change. As a result of the tax year being where it is most companies choose to match their financial year with their tax year because it's easier, and it also means that accounts end of working late at the end of march, instead of over Christmas/New years when normal people want to spend the time with their family.

The interesting part in here (imo) is that the accountant who produced the Capita accounts was regularly refusing to do things junior managers were demanding and frequently escalating issues to high level management. Now, why was this?

This sort of thing usually happens when a junior staff member is being asked to do something that everybody senior to them knows they shouldn't be doing in the hope that in their ignorance they will actually do it. If it fails, the junior staff member asks their manager for the direction in writing, the line manager dodges and says that <senior staff> asked for it to be done that way, and they think there must have been a miscommunication so why don't you ask them what they meant directly, thus passing the buck higher.

Senior staff member then when challenged on direction that shouldn't have been given of course won't give the junior the direction in writing (as this would defeat the object of when caught deploying the "it was a rouge junior staff member" defence and throwing them under the bus to defend the higher management) and gets out of the situation by claiming the chinese whisper defence of mangled instruction, and asks the junior staff member to do something somewhat plausible and within the rules.

Of course, this only happens at all, let alone repeatedly in a toxic sort of workplace where the firm is doing dodgy things. Which leaves one wondering what is going on when this happens repeatedly, and in connection with Capita's accounts.