PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Australia unit has moved to prevent staff who knew about tax leaks from working on current or future contracts involving the government amid a parliamentary hearing over the scandal and the start of a police investigation.
Australian police told a Senate committee Thursday that an investigation had been launched after Treasury referred the matter to law enforcement authorities the previous day. PwC Australia’s former head of international tax, Peter Collins “improperly used confidential Commonwealth information,” secretary to the treasury Steven Kennedy had said Wednesday.
PwC has been under fire amid revelations that Collins obtained secret information during his time as an adviser to the government and leaked it to his colleagues who used it to shop tax-planning advice to global corporate clients. Emails dating from 2014 to 2017, released following demands from parliament, show the extent of the collaboration between Collins and his colleagues in advising clients believed to include some of the biggest US tech firms.
Former PwC Australia Chief Executive Officer Tom Seymour and two other executives stepped down after the emails were made public and the firm announced an independent review of its governance, accountability and culture.
“We note the statement from the Treasury Secretary and will continue to cooperate fully with any investigations into this matter,” a PwC Australia spokesperson said Thursday.
Read more: PwC Australia Tax Scandal Fuels Global Implications
In the Senate hearing, Deputy Secretary for Finance Andrew Jaggers said his department hadn’t asked PwC to provide a list of the 53 partners named in the emails.
“I don’t want to prejudice any federal police investigation that may happen,” he said.
He said the department had sought assurances from the consulting firm that its internal investigation led by former telco executive Ziggy Switkowski would indeed be independent.
“There Has Been Change”
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said PwC now needed to show to her government that it had reformed the way its partners and staff operated.
“I think there has been change,” she said in the Senate. “The leadership that were involved in the response to the original letter are not the leadership that are now in there trying to respond,” Gallagher said.
Earlier, Clare O’Neil, minister for home affairs and cyber security, said PwC’s conduct was a “grotesque betrayal of trust” and the matter is being taken “incredibly seriously.”
“We are looking at a whole of government response to this,” she said in an interview on ABC Radio. “We will not stop until we get to the bottom of exactly what has happened here. It is a disgraceful incident and it must be properly investigated and the people responsible held to account.”
She said there are legal constraints around canceling the government’s existing contract with the consulting firm, but that “there is some furious work going on within government to what the legal constraints are on us here to make sure that we are appropriately addressing the issues that have been raised.”
(Adds detail from Senate hearing from first paragraph)
