PricewaterhouseCoopers Australia has listed at least 67 current and former employees involved in the leak of classified government tax plans in an unpublished letter to legislators ahead of parliamentary hearings later this week.
Aljazeera reported that one of the “big four” audit and advisory firms in the world, PwC, is battling to contain the fallout from an Australian scandal after a former partner who had been advising the federal government on new tax laws aimed at combating corporate tax avoidance shared confidential draughts with colleagues in an effort to attract business worldwide.
An extensive collection of 144 pages of emails that had been partially redacted and made public in May indicated that hundreds of employees had been working with PwC offices in the United States, Britain, Singapore, and the Netherlands to assist multinational corporations in evading a new tax rule in Australia.
PwC Australia on Monday gave a list of four former partners implicated in the leak, including the partner at the focus of the issue, in answer to inquiries from a senate committee.
A separate group of 63 current and past partners were also identified by the law firm as having received at least one email containing sensitive material about Australia’s 2016 Multinational Anti-Avoidance Law.
These employees might not have been aware of the breach of confidentiality.
The Australian Financial Review originally reported on the submission to the senate committee detailing the names, which was later confirmed by a PwC spokeswoman.
Last week, the acting CEO, Kristin Stubbins, apologized to the public for the issue and ordered nine partners to take time off while the investigation into the confidentiality violations is ongoing. Some of the partners were mentioned in the submission, but not all of them.
The possibility that private sector clients will follow a growing list of government agencies in reconsidering or stopping their business with the firm is increased as a result of last week’s decision by Australia’s largest pension fund to freeze future work with the firm.
