This is just wrong. Yes the government would like more people in the office spending more money in the city rather than the suburbs so they have more tax revenue. Yes they are specifically lobbying for government employees to have to come in for that exact reason. But you're claiming that "treasury" (note you don't indicate the actual position of the requester) is asking private businesses to come into the office more? And CEOs are just like "yeah sure it'll cost me employee retention and productivity and I'll have to continue to pay for office space but I'm ok losing money just to make you, Mr. or Mrs. Treasury, happy"? Like no that's not wtf happens. Unless the government is providing subsidies to companies that bring people back to the office, there's no way CEOs give a shit what the government has to say about remote work. And any such subsidy would not be secret it would be legislation or written into the tax code either of which would be publicly available to all of us. I note you didn't reference any.

The real answer is just Occam's razor. CEOs tend to be on the older side and want to micro manage too much. That's difficult in a remote setting and instead of being good leaders who measure long-term output, they prefer to measure "hard work" so stories of employees doing things like laundry and household chores rather than coffee gossip breaks make them think people who wfh don't work. But there are plenty of CEOs who aren't that way, and I happen to work for one. I joined post-covid but pre-covid there was already a strong "work from home, work whatever hours you want, as long as you get shit done we won't have a problem" culture. Post-covid they even sold their office and now they provide funding for people to work in coworking spaces if they want with that savings. I usually go in a few times per month because I do like seeing people and being able to meet face to face occasionally.