UK Lawyers for Israel vs. PricewaterhouseCoopers Global Network (PwC) 2

Date filed

10 October 2019

Keywords

Countries of harm

Occupied Palestinian Territory

Current status

No resolution

Sector

Financial

NCP

NCP United Kingdom

Allegations

On 10 October 2019, the NGO UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) submitted a complaint against PricewaterhouseCoopers global network (PwC) to the UK NCP. UKLFI alleges that a PwC entity (PwC Palestine Limited) audited two Palestinian NGOs (Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) and Defence for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P)) with alleged links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terrorist organisation in the EU, USA and Canada and the target of financial sanctions in the UK. UKLFI make several allegations, including that PwC failed to prevent or mitigate the adverse impact of such links and has therefore breached the OECD Guidelines. UKLFI argued that there was a direct link between PwC’s audits and the human rights harms allegedly caused by the PFLP.

Relevant OECD Guidelines

Outcome

On 16 June 2020, the UK NCP published its initial assessment in which it accepted the complaint for further examination. However, the NCP did not offer mediation to the parties. In its initial assessment, the NCP referred to a previous specific instance filed by UKLFI against PwC (UK Lawyers for Israel vs. PwC) with similar allegations about PwC’s auditing services to the Palestinian Authority relating to funding from the World Bank, in which the parties had engaged in mediation but failed to reach an agreement. On this basis, the parties in the present complaint agreed that mediation was “unlikely to progress matters and so it may be dispensed with.” Therefore, the UK NCP proceeded to the final examination stage without mediation.

On 24 September 2021, the UK NCP published its final statement deciding that PwC had not breached the OECD Guidelines when PwC Palestine Limited conducted its audit work in relation to UAWC and DCI-P. The NCP did not consider it necessary to make findings on the veracity of the allegations of links between UAWC and DCI-P and the PFLP.

The UK NCP stated that it was satisfied that following its recommendations in the previous specific instance filed by UKLFI against PwC, the PwC network of firms “undertook an extensive exercise to map the policies, procedures and standards in place across the network firms and ensure that they met or exceeded the standards set by the Guidelines.”

According to the complainants, in October 2021, the Israeli government designated UAWC and DCI-P as terrorist organizations and, one month later, PwC confirmed that it no longer audited DCI-P’s accounts because of this designation (PwC had ceased auditing the accounts of UAWC in 2019).