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In connection with advising clients in tax proceedings, of all things, employees of the auditing company PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) are said to have evaded sales taxes in the double-digit millions themselves. According to the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor's Office, there is a suspicion that consulting services provided in Germany between 2012 and 2017 were billed through the Swiss branch. The investigators put the tax damage for the German tax authorities at more than eleven million euros.
In search of evidence, there was an extensive search in several federal states on Tuesday with the support of the Hessian tax authorities and the Federal Criminal Police Office, the investigators said.
On suspicion of tax evasion in particularly serious cases, the apartments of four senior employees and four former senior employees of the auditing company - not named by the public prosecutor's office - were searched.
There were further searches in business premises in Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hanover and Stuttgart.
PwC confirms searches
A PwC spokesman confirmed the searches.
“Prosecutor investigations keep coming up.
We have precise processes and clear procedures that are known to our employees;
we are cooperating fully with the authorities, "said the spokesman on request.
According to the Public Prosecutor's Office, the accused between the ages of 50 and 67 are suspected of having "untruthfully declared the services provided to the tax offices as those of a Swiss company in the joint international network".
"The inclusion of the Swiss company is said to have served exclusively to conceal the consulting services in Switzerland and thus to evade sales tax," the investigators explained.
mamk / dpa-afx