"Secrets and lies: The undoing of global giant PwC", 3 June 2023

[...]

The Department of Finance has effectively banned PwC from any further government work. This removes PwC’s single biggest customer. Meanwhile, corporate giant Lend Lease has “paused” plans to appoint PwC as its new auditor, and on Friday Australia’s largest super fund, AustralianSuper, froze all future contracts with the firm and will review its auditing work with PwC at the end of the year.

Even the RBA boss Philip Lowe said the central bank would no longer use the firm – having embarrassingly used the firm to get to the bottom of its underpayments issue.

The only uncertainty that remains is whether PwC will also be referred to the National Anti-Corruption Commission, which opens its doors for business on July 1.

[...]

[A]s the details of the offence started filtering out more broadly, PwC, while apologetic, played down the seriousness of the offence.

“We acknowledge the TPB found that a partner of the firm did not comply with confidentiality agreements in relation to a consultation process with Treasury, which occurred in 2014,” a PwC spokesman said at the time.

Privately, PwC told journalists – but more importantly, Finance – that the information was shared with a small group of people within the firm and the investigation did not find that any client arrangements or structures were impacted in connection with this matter.

Technically, this was true, but the most charitable interpretation is that it was incredibly misleading.