Packer’s PBL in latest tax leak: report

Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL) allegedly negotiated a secret deal with the Swiss government when James Packer was chief executive officer, which set a tax rate of less than 2.15 per cent for the media group’s intra-company loans, The Australian Financial Review reports.

According to correspondence obtained by the newspaper, after securing the deal in 1996, Ernst & Young Swiss partner Markus Huber wrote to PBL’s Sydney-based accountants: “We are convinced that this is an extremely favourable ruling.”

The AFR reports “the mystery finance business” had been built up over the period of a decade until, in 2008, it was transferred to Crown Resorts, where it now operates as Crown Group Securities.

A spokesman for Mr Packer’s Consolidated Press Holdings denied the company moved profits offshore or that offshore companies acted as a “black box” within the structure of PBL, the AFR reports.