Partners from both of these operations will be exposed if a senate estimate hearing, and a separate senate inquiry, succeed in obtaining the names of the partners implicated in the scandal and the global companies they targeted. Three of the largest global corporations – Apple, Google and Microsoft – are believed to be among the targets.
Senator Deborah O’Neill – who chairs the Corporations and Financial Services Committee which released the damning 148-page document revealing the scale of the firm’s profiteering from leaking confidential government tax plans to potential clients – said PwC needs to come clean now and not wait for the results of its Australian investigation, which is due in September.
“I call on all those at PwC who understand the enormity of what has occurred, the scale of the moral and ethical failure now publicly documented, to demand that their current leadership team PwC Australia and PwC Global do the right thing by the Australian people. Name the names,” she said.
“Current PwC staff who want to distance themselves from the public documents and scandalous cultural practices need to press for the leadership to shift today. No more obfuscation and cover-up.”
Ahead of his resignation from the top job at PwC Australia, Seymour confirmed he had received the emails but denied he was aware the information was from a breach of confidentiality agreement by PwC partner Peter Collins.
Collins received a two-year professional ban from the Tax Practitioners Board earlier this year in response to his breach of the confidentiality agreement.
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