Consulting giant PwC winning the battle to keep tax scandal as secret as possible

Committee secretary Patrick Hodder with Senator Richard Colbeck as PwC executives are questioned. Picture: Martin Ollman

After almost six hours of hearings and an ensemble of consultants, regulators and politicians, Australia is still in the dark about the international links that made the PwC tax scandal possible.

Despite coming armed with profuse apologies, PwC Australia chief executive Kevin Burrowes was unable to unmask the “Dirty Six”, members of the firm’s international operation who enjoyed confidential information supplied by PwC’s former head of international tax, Peter Collins.

Instead, parliament was treated to a trail of non answers.

Friday may mark a win for PwC as it seeks to move on and protect its profitable US market from the mess, thanks to efforts by the global leadership to keep information out of the hands of Burrowes, one of their own, who was parachuted in to stop the bleeding.

Burrowes does not know the names of the Dirty Six and seemingly has not asked to see a trail of emails showing the voyage of confidential tax briefings from Australia into the inboxes of the firm’s senior partners in New York, California, Ireland and London.

Collins’s emails, released by parliament, reveal their flow, with Tax Practitioners Board boss Peter de Cure noting he had a decent idea as to who the Dirty Six might be. Collins supplied confidential briefings to them as part of Project North America, as the consulting giant sought to pitch US tech giants for new business.

Law firm Linklaters cleared the six, noting they “should have raised questions as to whether the information was confi­dential”.

Burrowes could not tell the Senate committee the contents of the report, despite seemingly being briefed on its outcome in August last year, when he told a group of retired partners it was likely to deliver a “reasonably clean bill of health” for PwC.

Burrowes wouldn’t even reveal whether PwC restored the retirement benefits of Neil Fuller, the “rover” who helped Collins in his tax efforts, noting he was bound by a legal deal he’d signed off.

Speaking later in the afternoon, Scyne Advisory probity and conflicts committee chair and former Federal Court judge Anthony Greenwood noted his review of PwC executives seeking to jump over to the new public service consulting business had picked up only one person who had sought to question the tax scandal.

Greenwood told the Senate this executive group member had questioned the Collins tax issue and related matters and was told “it was an issue confined to one or two people”.