PwC’s Australian unit used legal privilege inappropriately to hide documents from the country’s tax office during tax audits of a multinational business, the Federal Court of Australia said Friday.
PricewaterhouseCoopers Australia refused to hand over documents relating to subsidiaries of JBS SA, a Brazilian food processor, when the Australian Tax Office began auditing the businesses in 2019. PwC claimed legal professional privilege, under which lawyer-client communications are confidential.
Federal Court Justice Mark Moshinsky ruled that there was a legitimate lawyer-client relationship but that PwC inappropriately applied privilege to more than half of the documents that the ...
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