PwC has disgraced itself down under
ANTHONY ALBANESE, Australia’s prime minister, has called it “completely unacceptable”. Jim Chalmers, his treasurer, is “furious”. The object of their ire is PwC. The professional-services giant is in hot water over allegations that, after helping the government design a new system to make foreign multinational firms pay more tax, it used its inside knowledge to help global clients circumvent those same measures.
The scandal centres on Peter-John Collins, a former PwC partner who counselled the government on the tax rules between 2013 and 2015 and then leaked details of the work to at least 53 fellow partners in Australia and abroad. The Australian Tax Office, suspicious of the speed with which multinationals adapted, raised the matter in 2018 with the Australian Federal Police, and in 2020 with the Tax Practitioners Board (TPB), an accreditation body.
In January it was revealed that the TPB had at the end of last year banned Mr Collins from tax work for two years over the incident. Since then the affair has escalated into a reputational nightmare for PwC. On May 8th its Australian boss stepped down. On May 31st Australia’s central bank said it would exclude the firm from future contracts until it had rebuilt trust. On June 2nd AustralianSuper, the country’s largest pension fund, took similar steps; the Australian Retirement Trust, the second-biggest, followed suit on June 6th. Many departments of Australia’s federal government, PwC’s biggest client in the country, will be reviewing their ties.
2023-06-08 08:48:57
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