Consulting giant PwC is embroiled in a scandal of its own doing, having used confidential government information to benefit its bottom line. Here's how it happened, and what consequences the firm is facing.
In other words, that's more than $537 million of taxpayer money that is being used to hire PwC's experts to provide advice on how to solve the government's problems.
That legislation was known as the Multinational Anti-Avoidance Law and was a major strategy of the then-treasurer Joe Hockey under the Coalition government, based on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development 's Base Erosion Profit Shifting project. PwC then used this inside information to get new clients and make money. They were even boasting about it internally, and all of this was happening without the government's knowledge until earlier this year.
It wasn't until a month later, in January, after the Australian Financial Review published a story saying Mr Collins leaked government tax plans to clients which led to his deregistration, that Treasurer Jim Chalmers commented."There is no consultation without trust, and we want to be able to consult in a meaningful way when changes to the tax system are in prospect. And the actions that we've seen alleged and reported cut across that.
"We recognise and understand the need for our tax system to operate with integrity and deeply regret confidentiality in this matter was not maintained." The emails also showed that not only were several of Mr Collins's colleagues aware that he was leaking these secret government documents — in some cases, they were supportive of him doing so.
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