AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw and former NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller, who now works for PwC, have already had private communication about the PwC tax dodging scandal that is now being investigated by the federal police.
Kershaw and Fuller have a history of working together to cover-up government corruption, but more on that in a minute.
Mick Fuller is his role as a partner at PwC is currently doing work reviewing ACT Policing which is a branch of the AFP. PwC has current contracts with the AFP such as a $5.9 million contract with PwC for software and support services.
There can be no doubt that crimes have taken place potentially costing Australia $millions if not $billions in lost tax revenue. The person at the centre of the scandal Peter Collins was banned by the Tax Practitioners Board on the 1st of March 2023 for 2 years and with other evidence that has already been made public there is more than enough evidence to charge dozens of PwC staff.
The bottom line to the PwC tax avoidance scandal is:
Peter Collins’s activities relate to information he received during consultations with government ahead of a 2015 change to tax law aimed at multinational tax avoidance. The use of this information to help clients avoid the laws only came to light early this year when the Tax Practitioners Board suspended his licence for two years and rebuked PwC for using its privileged access to confidential government information to gain and service its corporate clients.
Questions from Labor senator Deborah O’Neill at a senate estimates hearing on February 15 elicited more details from the board, including that “20 to 30” people from PwC might have been involved. Responding on May 2 to a question taken on notice, the tax board produced and tabled more than 140 pages of internal PwC emails that revealed what is believed to be more than 50 company staff in offices around the world had been copied into discussions about leveraging the information. All names had been redacted, other than that of Peter Collins.
Treasury secretary Dr Steven Kennedy announced late on Wednesday that he had referred PwC’s head of international tax, Peter Collins, to police, alleging Collins “improperly used confidential Commonwealth information” in preparing tax plans for multinational companies. (Click here to read more)
The last time that Reece Kershaw and Mick Fuller worked together it was to cover-up one of federal MP Angus Taylor’s crimes. In 2019 Angus Taylor was accused of tampering with a Sydney City Council financial document by fraudulently increasing the amount of spending on travel to attack Mayor Clover Moore for being a hypocrite on the environment.
Angus Taylor was likely motivated to do it because his wife, who worked in Taylor’s office, was planning on running for the Sydney Lord Mayor position.
Mick Fuller, who was NSW Police Commissioner at the time, had a phone call from Prime Minister Scott Morrison about the matter and then didn’t investigate the alleged crime but instead Fuller palmed it off to Reece Kershaw’s AFP who swept it under the carpet. (Click here to read more)
In the below video Senator David Shoebridge asks Reece Kershaw about his friendship with Mick Fuller and if he had declared the conflict. Reece Kershaw’s arrogant response is disturbing. Also there is video of Reece Kershaw refusing to answer questions in March 2020 about the Angus Taylor document fraud.
Senator David Shoebridge has also Tweeted: “The AFP has a number of contracts with PwC including one to do a review of ACT Policing. This is being undertaken by former NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller who is now Partner, Government and Public Sector Consulting at PwC.” and “We have just uncovered in budget estimates that the AFP who are currently investigating breaches of the law by PwC have PwC as their internal auditors with wide scale access to information and systems. That’s an impossible conflict of interest.”
The above alone says there is a huge conflict of interest for the AFP to be investigating the PwC matter. But add that to the gross incompetence, negligence and corruption that has been exposed by AFP police’s community policing arm “ACT Policing” then an inquiry into the AFP is the only solution.
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Categories: Australian Federal Police, Australian Tax Office - ATO
If Labor let this go, without intervention, then they don’t deserve to be in power. The legacy of Morrison with his corrupt mates is absolutely nauseating. It was glaringly obvious with the Porter investigation that Fuller then, was a man willing to bend the rules.
These mates of Morrison need to be weeded out and publicly shamed and convicted.
100% in agreement w you AA !! Will these matters come under the new Fed’l ICAC, and given that most of their inquiries and findings will be kept behind closed doors, how will we ever know??? Clearly the AFP needs a huge broom taken to it to sweep out the muck of corruption that has occurred during the crooked-Morrison years !!!
Hard to believe former Commissioner Fuller is engaged by PwC in any form whatsoever let alone a partner, with his failures in his former role, this is absolutely incredible news, if anyone needed proof any of these big four firms needed to be jettisoned from any Tax advisory or any Government advice, this takes it….cover up guaranteed….and incumbent Government fully aware says what we know about their failures to provide accountability…. another complete failure, outcomes already known
It’s frightening that Fuller is giving advice to organisations.
PWC, and the other big players, routinely absorb retiring dept’ chiefs such as Fuller. They are then set to task to lobby their former colleagues for work, who they themselves stand, possibly, to benefit from getting their own partnership. It’s how it works … that old tale of it’s who you know, not what you know. It’s how the entire industry works and sadly, for ordinary Australians, the practice is so ingrained that an enquiry will go no where with this one either. Having had cause to refer corruption to Cm AFP in the past, his personal response was dismissive to say the least. He will do the same here.
“He will do the same here.”
Labor Govts and Oppositions have experienced the political leanings of of a supposedly apolitical (very powerful) Agency.
Damned formatting
After Howard’s very public put down of Commissioner Mick Keelty over his statement that the Bali Bombing was payback for Australia’s involvement in the Middle East, Contrary to what Howard was publicly saying. Then the AFP housing PM Abbott when he “lived” in Canberra. Along with the AFP, which supplies the ACT with their Police, refusal to comply with the current ACT Labor Government’s Inquiry into the Lehrman Trial stuff-up.
Its not surprising that they and the LNP are living in the same pockets.
I would say that Labor really want to get to the bottom of this. If what people generally feel, as has been frequently posted to online Comments like these, that the AFP is bent, and the current Inquiry reaches that conclusion, I suspect there will be far reaching consequences for the AFP and it won’t be in favour of its senior and middle management.
So I am hopeful the AFP wont get away “Scot free”.
Great summary, great comments. Tip of the corrupt government consultant rort iceberg, presumably. Fuller’s appointment says it all.
This series of incidents have the hallmark of methods employed by the Scott Morrison along with the prior led Lib/Nat party during that party’s ra as Australia’s leadership government.
The volume of Lib/Nat party criminal-like incidents had their genesis from an earlier Lib/Nat party government leadership party led by the treacherous John W Howard.
One is able to conclude that since the 2013 election win that provided our nation’s former Lib/Lab party Prime Ministers, Abbott, Turnbull, & Morrison were former ministers that had served under that lying treacherous propaganda spieling John Howard era.
Interestingly, none of the above-mentioned Prime Ministers were given a stiff prison sentence for their alleged criminal undertakings in office?
For me to state otherwise than my claims against John Howard are not without their fact-evidenced origin, as I have since printed out & stored these same in my fact proven file of evidence that Howard had been nothing other than a rotten lying rodent during his time served as an Australian Prime Minister.
Morrison had been an avid student of the Howard-era criminal-like Prime-Minister
reign from March 1996 to December 2007, hence the magnitude of the dishonesty employed by Scott Morrison.
Do recall Attorney General under lying Howard, Senator Brandis was caught out calling Howard ‘ a lying little Rodent’ very apt description of Howard, the same PM who stated he’d never introduce a GST then later mislead Parliament and the Australian Public that upon the introduction of the GST, he’d remove State Stamp Duty, which as we know, never happened and when quizzed years later about abolishing State Stamp Duty, replied he’d ‘forgotten ‘ to do same…
it is incredible, like a fantasy film from Disney. Why have they not been arrested? This is fraud against the Commonwealth, it is also criminal behaviour (why is this unsurprising from one of the big four criminal accounting firms who’s primary objective is to help clients avoid taxes, hide their money in off shore tax havens, blah, blah, blah. The 50 individuals should be indicted, the principals jailed and the firm blacklisted forever from any government contracts.
when will the assets of PWC partners be confiscated .As earnings of crime?
Several long standing issues here:
1) With the amount of ‘consulting’ it seemingly exorbitant rates, dished out willy-nilly to what would appear a small pool of high-end players, should this be shown to be ‘achieved by open public tender’; together with the CONTRACT PRICE?
2) This of course beggars the larger question, why is the army of highly paid bureaucrats not able or competent to provide this advice??
3) Road users are subjected to ‘Double Demerit’ penalties.
Would it be unreasonable to suggest that a person in Public Office who has been lawfully convicted of corruption or malfeasance in the portfolio in which they work, should be subjected to MAXIMUM penalties as a minimum, if not a Double Penalty?
4) With the advent of computer accounting and in general office work, it would be relatively easy to have government expenditures and contracts available to the general public for oversight – TRANSPARENCY.
Obviously there would have to be some restriction that this could be highlighted to enable people to be aware of restricted information.
5) Consideration should be given to restricting higher executive Public Service and Ministers of State ‘retiring (on privilege pensions and other remunerations)’ then being employed by entities which they had former influence over or have potentially privileged access to information. A classic example is the former Liberal, Andrew Robb, who effectively sold the port of Darwin to the Chinese, then has taken up a lucrative contract.
Too many, this is an act of potential treason if you in the form of National Defence considerations.
None of this will happen of course, because ‘Government is the ULTIMATE form of organised crime’, and that is not a glib or throwaway line – think about it.
Not surprising really. If you denigrate and degrade the public service, and outsource key functions to the private sector, naturally firms like PwC will fulfil their legal duty to maximise the owners’ income. The PwC episode is bad, definitely, but there is a much more serious governance problem behind it.
𝗔𝘀 𝘂𝘀𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗸𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗿𝗼𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲. 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗲 “𝗶𝗻” 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝗲 𝗸𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗸𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺𝘀𝗲𝗹𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗻.