A PwC partner who the ATO claims was assigned to work on a matter for meat processing company JBS to bring a “cloak of legal privilege” earned hundreds of dollars less per hour than his non-lawyer assistants, a court has heard.
Meat processing company and former PricewaterhouseCoopers client JBS has slammed as a “nightmare to the rule of law” a claim by the Commissioner of Taxation that the accounting giant’s internal protocols destroyed the company’s lawyer-client relationship.
Accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers used one of its legally qualified partners as a “postbox” to provide a “cloak of privilege” to work conducted for meat processing company JBS, the Commissioner of Taxation has told the Federal Court.
PricewaterhouseCoopers has objected to swathes of evidence from the Commissioner of Taxation being included in an upcoming trial over privilege, claiming the material oversteps a process put in place by the court to only examine a small sample of documents.