Consulting giant PwC has been accused of misleading the Senate for planning to sell its consultancy business at the same time it told a 2019 inquiry that separating its auditing and consulting divisions would make it impossible to operate.Current and former PwC executives were grilled at a Senate inquiry examining the consulting industry
The inquiry was established in March after PwC's former head of international tax, Peter-John Collins, shared confidential tax information from Treasury and the Australian Tax Office in 2014 to reverse-engineer a scheme to help big multinational companies avoid paying their fair share of tax in Australia.
The plan had become advanced enough that Mr Sayers travelled to the US to push the idea of the sale, with the inquiry noting the valuation of the business was around $1 billion — but the deal never went through. "That makes me question everything that you've been telling me today, because those two things are completely at odds."
"Switkowski's main finding is that the PwC scandal arose because of the firm's pursuit of revenue at any cost, a 'whatever-it-takes' culture, and a system in relation to revenue putting profit above ethics," she said. "Well, clearly the firm has found itself in a terrible position and through a failure of leadership," Mr Burrowes replied.
"I feel accountable, it is just a terrible, terrible situation. But the bottom line is that there was a number of bad actor tax partners that behaviourally made the wrong choices," Mr Sayers said.Senator Pocock rejected Mr Sayers's assessment of the situation, repeating Mr Burrowes's assertion that the breach was the result of "a failure of leadership, a failure of culture".
At a Senate estimates hearing in May, the Australian Taxation Office said it first tried to investigate PwC in 2016 before raising their concerns with Treasury and the AFP in 2018 — during which time Mr Sayers was in charge.
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PwC tax scandal: former PwC boss Luke Sayers explored selling consulting businessWatch live: Senators have spent the morning grilling PwC Australia chief executive Kevin Burrowes but are now scrutinising one of his predecessors.
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