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Australian authorities alleged in a senate inquiry into a PwC tax scandal that the accountancy firm is “deliberately hiding” a report detailing how leaked government information was used outside the country.
PwC has been embroiled in scandal after revelations that the consultant’s Australian arm used confidential information about tax avoidance legislation to win new business.
The Australian government launched a senate inquiry into the scandal last year. In a hearing on Friday, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) said it was frustrated it could not access an internal PwC report into the scandal that was completed by law firm Linklaters.
In a summary of the report, Linklaters said six unidentified partners outside Australia should have asked where the tax information had come from and that disciplinary action had been taken against them. The full report has not been revealed.
“We share the frustrations of this committee that an organisation which claims to be co-operative is deliberately hiding behind the difference between their local firm and the international firm,” said ATO official Jeremy Hirschhorn about PwC.
Kevin Burrowes, who was appointed to lead PwC Australia last year, said that he had formally requested that PwC International — which is a separate legal entity to the Australian firm — provide him with a copy of the Linklaters report but that the request had been refused as the information was “privileged and confidential to PwC”.
Australian senators, who last year published emails related to the tax leaks scandal, called on PwC to publish the Linklaters report and reveal the names of the “dirty six” overseas partners.
Richard Colbeck, a senator for the Liberal party, told the hearing that the politicians were “deadly serious” about extracting the report. “If we don’t see the report, it ain’t going to be pretty,” he said.
PwC Australia, which published a separate report it had commissioned into the scandal, declined to comment further on the Linklaters document. PwC declined to comment.
Andy Schmulow, an associate professor at the University of Wollongong’s school of law, said PwC was attracting more criticism for failing to reveal the report. “What’s in that report that they would rather risk the wrath of this [Senate] committee rather than just publish the report,” he said.
Burrowes was parachuted in to run PwC Australia last June as the global organisation took control of the local firm following the scandal.
PwC Australia has also sold its large and profitable government consultancy business for a nominal sum as a number of its customers said they would not hand new contracts to the business due to the tax scandal.
“This is a calamity wrapped in a crisis surrounded by a catastrophe,” Schmulow said of the scandal.
