Luke Sayers stand-down unlikely to end scandal surrounding former Carlton president and PwC chief

Just weeks ago Luke Sayers was enjoying an Italian holiday, but now he is set to exit his positions across the consulting sector and Carlton Football Club in the wake of a lewd picture scandal.

Clockwise from left: Luke Sayers; his family’s recently sold landmark home, Strathnaver, in Hawthorn East; with wife Cate; and on holidays with daughters Bronte (left) and Claudia in Italy.

Days before the photo that would end Luke Sayers’ time at the top of Carlton Football Club and his eponymous consulting firm Sayers Group, the well-known Melbourne figure had been on tour, on the ski slopes and indulging in the sights of Milan.

Pictures showed Mr Sayers, the former heavyweight head of audit and consulting firm PwC Australia, beaming alongside daughters Bronte and Claudia.

The boy from Rochester, in central Victoria, was stepping back from steering his consulting firm Sayers Group, having surrendered the executive chair role.

Instead Mr Sayers would take on the role of chair at the partnership – while retaining the corner office – as he focused on his last year at the top of Carlton football club and a busy personal life.

The businessman had just wrapped up the $16.5m sale of his stately home in Melbourne’s well-heeled East Hawthorn, flogging the 1886 mansion amid “downsizing” plans for Mr Sayers and his wife Cate.

The former PwC boss had also told those close to him he thought the scandal surrounding the firm had moved on, noting in an interview last year – as he pushed for another term at the top of Carlton, while the public inquiries were continuing – “From my personal perspective, I believe that’s completed.”

This is despite Mr Sayers having steered PwC from 2012 through to 2020 and the firm being in the glare of the Australian Taxation Office from at least 2016 over alleged breaches of government confidentiality.

PwC’s former head of international tax, Peter Collins, was banned from the profession after being found to have taken confidential government tax briefings and shared them with others in the firm.

This allowed PwC to front-run new tax laws introduced in 2016, with the firm’s election-eve pitch to clients that it had a solution to the new tax laws triggering an explosion at the ATO.

In a meeting at PwC’s Sydney office, ATO deputy commissioner Mark Konza rebuked three of its senior tax partners over the plan.

Mr Sayers, at this point entering his second stretch as chief executive at PwC, previously ran the firm’s tax practice. But on January 8 a lewd picture burst into Mr Sayers’ carefully curated world, with the shot of a penis presented on his X (formerly Twitter) account.

The image, tagging a female executive at health insurer Bupa, a sponsor of the Carlton football club, landed at 8am in Italy and remained online for almost 13 minutes before Mr Sayers addressed it. “Sorry, my account has been hacked – please ignore all posts,” he said.

When a lewd image on his X account, Luke Sayers said his account was hacked and has since deleted his X account.

Mr Sayers doubled down on the hack, telling media he would “leave no stone unturned finding out who did this to me and my family”.

But in the wake of his first interventions, Mr Sayers went silent, with calls to the businessman going unanswered and statements being issued on his behalf by senior partners at Sayers Group.

Carlton, too, was left scrambling to respond to the lewd picture crisis, with Bupa acting boss Nicholas Stone demanding answers from the club over the ­incident.

Carlton, like the broader AFL, has made much of its efforts to bring women into the game and shed the blokey image that has dominated the sport for decades.

The club was one of several founding AFL Women’s teams.

In response to the crisis, Carlton brought in the AFL’s powerful Integrity Commission, the league’s investigative body, which moved to interview Mr Sayers, as well as the woman tagged in the post.

But behind the scenes Mr Sayers was also moving to manage the fallout, with the 63-year-old tapping several of his old Melbourne connections.

This included Arnold Bloch Leibler “Mr Fix-it” Leon Zwier, a storied member of the Melbourne legal scene known for representing the likes of the Grollo family, the Pratts and Josh Frydenberg and a go-to guy for the Melbourne, Collingwood and Essendon Football clubs, as well as several Hawthorn players alleging historic racist treatment.

Mr Sayers also tapped millionaire “spinner” Sharon McCrohan, who made a fortune representing Aussie fintech Afterpay after a career in politics for Labor premiers Steve Bracks and John Brumby.

Luke Sayers with daughters in Italy. Picture: Instagram

McCrohan is among a coterie of public relations figures tapped by Mr Sayers in recent years as he’s sought to manage the message around Carlton and the scandal surrounding PwC.

The veteran flack, who didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment, was tipped to be key to a flurry of statements made by Carlton, the AFL and Mr Sayers on Wednesday.

The AFL and Carlton were in lock-step as the two revealed Mr Sayers had been cleared by the integrity commission, “based on the available evidence”, which found the club boss’s X account had been “compromised” and he did not post the picture.

Despite this, Mr Sayers stood down as Carlton president, with his term set to run until the end of the year.

Mr Sayers also revealed he would step aside from the top job at Sayers Group, which has been profitable since 2022, with nine powerful figures in the firm taking on the running of the consulting shop.

However, the person responsible for the sharing of the lewd picture was not named.

Sources have suggested Mr Sayers may also be facing a breakdown of his marriage to Cate, with whom he shares four ­children.

Ms Sayers removed herself as a director of the Inclusion Foundation in October last year, a charity she co-founded with Mr Sayers to champion people with Down syndrome.

Soon after the couple sold their Melbourne home. However, they still share a number of luxury properties including several renovated historical villas in the Italian city of Lucca.

Sources close to the scandal said despite Mr Sayers’ attempt to stamp it out by resigning, it was not the end. “I don’t think this is going away for Luke,” one said.

Senator Barbara Pocock said it is ‘implausible’ that Luke Sayers knew nothing of PwC’s tax scandal. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Critics of PwC, who have been demanding answers over the firm’s links to the tax scandal, say Mr Sayers’ departure doesn’t clear the cloud from Sayers Group, with sources saying the consulting firm is already mulling a name change to mark a departure from its high-profile founder.

Greens Senator Barbara Pocock warns both Sayers Group and PwC should be excluded from government contracts over their links to the tax scandal.

Ms Pocock said Mr Sayers, who denies any knowledge of the tax scandal, had shown a “failure of accountability and leadership by any measure”. “Luke Sayers sat before the Senate and said he knew nothing. We found that implausible,” she said. “Whatever the truth about what and when Mr Sayers knew, as leader throughout these years, he should have known what was going on and accepted some responsibility. Dozens of people within PwC knew about the breach, as we know from the email trails.” Australian Federal Police are still investigating.

Originally published as Luke Sayers stand-down unlikely to end scandal surrounding former Carlton president and PwC chief