Behind the scenes of the PwC tax leak scandal with Neil Chenoweth

26th October 2023

As scandals go the revelations by the International Consortium of Journalists is surely one of the biggest to hit the big accountancy firms.

The crisis has snowballed into an international embarrassment for the Big Four firm. ICIJ member Neil Chenoweth walks us through how he broke the story — and what comes next.

Since January, the Australian consulting arm of accounting giant PwC, or PricewaterhouseCoopers, has been rocked by a scandal that began with a report by ICIJ member Neil Chenoweth in The Australian Financial Review.

Chenoweth revealed that while the PwC was profiting from a lucrative contract advising the Australian government on new tax laws for multinationals, some of its senior partners were using the intel to court clients seeking to sidestep those same laws. And the revelations kept coming — causing an upheaval within PwC and a global crisis for the Big Four firm.

Here, Chenoweth reflects on how the story unfolded and what it reveals about the powerful international consulting industry.

Listen to the podcast (18 Minutes) or read the transcript HERE