Announcing the Scam of the Year awards in Australian business and politics. What an embarrassment of rorting riches it is. Michael West with the countdown of elite scams, the creme de la creme, unvarnished, what you will not read in fossil media.
Source: Scam of the Year 2023: nine of the niftiest scams in Australian business and politics – Michael West
“Cormann was issued equity in Sayers Group in ‘December 2020’, just weeks after leaving Federal Parliament”
Welfare advocates claim Australia’s unemployment system has rewarded job service providers, even when they have not helped jobseekers.
When some 10 Liberal MPs under Abbott were found either receiving undeclared Rolex’s or raiding their Government expense accounts they were all let off. Except for Peter Slipper, once Abbott’s bestie, wanted gone. Peter Slipper was the brutal victim of James Ashby in a political, LNP conspiracy of which he was ultimately proven innocent. Accused of claiming a $300 petty cab charge when the others even Abbott took 1000s and were let off unpunished.
KMPG tried has been caught trying it on for $100 million and nobody has been jailed or even made it to the front pages of the News Corp press like Peter Slipper did. These were the LNP’s most favored consultants, the moneymen regarded as more honest than our Public Service, our Treasury when it came to auditing budget figures. Just ask Joe Hockey. They were the perfect political party accountants who got caught with a fist full of Australia’s dollars. But has anyone been jailed? We sat and watched Stuart Robert untouched for slipping backhander contracts to his mates. He was a serial offender regularly caught but never charged.
A Defence data project involving a $100 million contract issued to KPMG is rife with serious governance failures, conflicts of interests and a “lack of accountability”, according to an external review.
Source: $100m Defence contract with KPMG rife with governance failures, review finds – ABC News
According to Shane Dowling
Billionaire Kerry Stokes is Bruce Lehrmann’s puppet master for all his media interviews for 12 months which shows up in a contract Lehrmann signed with Stokes’ Channel Seven on either the 2nd of April or the 21st of April 2023.
Kerry Stokes’ Seven, as per the video below, is also the one driving a compensation payout of $12 million for Bruce Lehrmann for the claimed damage that has been done to his reputation and life by the Brittany Higgins rape allegation.
Bruce Lehrmann’s contract with Kerry Stokes’ Seven is similar to the contract that Ben Roberts-Smith signed with Seven to get funding for his defamation case against Nine Entertainment’s newspapers. Once Ben Roberts-Smith’s dodgy deal with Seven was exposed the deal was transferred to Kerry Stokes’ private company Australian Capital Equity.
Part of the Ben Roberts-Smith / Kerry Stokes deal stated that if Ben Roberts-Smith won his defamation case Kerry Stokes would get his costs back as well as 15% of the damages paid to Ben Roberts-Smith.
Given the above, there has to be a real possibility that Seven and/or Kerry Stokes are funding Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case which would help explain why Seven are pushing an ever-increasing compensation payout amount for Lehrmann which is currently sitting at $12 million.
The drawn-out saga of Dixon Advisory – the superannuation managers who enticed their clients into investment assets they managed – has come to an end. Four cents to the dollar for the superannuants; millions for lawyers, accountants and ASIC. What’s the scam?
The scam is how Dixon Advisory enticed their superannuation clients into investing in assets that they managed, in many cases without properly considering their client’s circumstances when making those investments.
Stopping this sort of Corporate Colonisation of Australia is a definite “No” vote. Our shame those found guilty won’t be punished. Indigenous Australians didn’t steal anything but will be if “No” passes and the world will judge us all as citizens of a shameful nation.
Stolen Australian Government tax policy information was shared between two top-level groups of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Australia’s controversial “Transfer Pricing” tax division, documents reveal.
The NSW government’s Landcom has sold a hectare of prime bushland in Sydney for just $41k to shopping centre developers but has declined to respond to questions about the number of people at the auction. Callum Foote reports.
Last month, the NSW Government’s land and property developer Landcom sold a hectare of bushland in Sydney’s Shire for just $41k. The median house price for the area is $1.4 million, with the sale going to shopping centre developer Revelop.
Source: Did you miss the auction? Shucks. Government sells a hectare of Sydney for just $41k – Michael West
What’s the scam with the powerful and secretive lobby group APPEA? The lobbyists who tout for Santos, Shell, BP, Exxon, Origin and Woodside have been hiding their financial accounts for two years.
Requests for an interview with chief executive Samantha McCullogh have been ignored. The APPEA PR guy has told Michael West Media he would not be disclosing them.
APPEA got the South Australian government to push through the most draconian anti-peaceful-protest laws in the country in the wake of its annual conference in Adelaide this year.
Source: What’s the scam Sam? ASIC is wondering too – Michael West
What’s the Scam? Banks are covered you’re not
The financial complaints authority appears to have made inconsistent rulings on whether to give customers refunds after phishing scams, based on whether customers admit to clicking dodgy links.
Economic Theory overlooks reality,
It is not that the sacred market cannot pay workers better, but rather that it is not convenient. A person in a state of need (tied to debt or poverty) is a modern, docile, manipulable, functional slave. Just like the indebted countries—the indebted poor, not the indebted rich.
Source: Supply and Demand Is a Scam to Disguise Inhumane Working Conditions | The Smirking Chimp
A new report confirms that Big Business in Australia is totally dominated by foreign owners, particularly the fossil fuels export sector now whining, make that ‘always whining’, about modest tweaks to curb their profiteering. What’s the scam?
Source: Business Council of Australia … or Business Council of Foreign Multinationals? – Michael West
Consulting firm PwC pulled off a remarkable feat as Adani pushed to open its Carmichael Coal Mine — it got paid by both the miner and its government overseer. Rod Campbell reports on the maestros of conflicts of interest.
Source: PwC and the Adani mine triple dip. A conflict of interest? Surely not – Michael West
What’s the scam with the Qantas board letting CEO Alan Joyce dump $17m worth of his own Qantas shares into the share buy-back?
The scam is buy-backs. They simply prop up the share price using shareholders’ own money, not to mention, in the case of Qantas, the public’s bail-out money. And this buy-back is already in the red so Qantas shareholders have helped Alan get out for a higher price. Meantime, not one new aircraft was bought under the Joyce regime, so the fleet ran down, customer service ran down and now Alan’s successor faces a massive capex bill to fix things.
If they had nationalised Qantas when the Pandemic hit, the government would be floating it again for $12bn now.
Source: Alan Joyce selling his own Qantas shares into the buy-back, que? – Michael West
The Centre for Public Integrity has published analysis of political donations and government contract work for Big 4 firms EY, KPMG, Deloitte and PwC. What’s the scam?
Source: Government gutted as PwC, Big 4 pick up $1.4b a year for giving advice – Michael West
Wow $12 and everybody is happy while we the people get screwed and pay
Be suspicious, be very suspicious! Albo is capping off Labor’s first year in office triumphant, his deal to cap gas and coal prices even lauded by the pro-gas corporate media. What’s the scam?
Source: Be suspicious: behind Albo’s masterstroke to cap fossil prices, ease power bills – Michael West
What’s the scam? It’s the fossil fuel corporations again, the usual suspects, paying no income tax despite billions in income. For yet another year: Exxon nought, Shell nought, Ampol, BP and APLNG nought, and Chevron putting them all to shame with the $30 in income tax paid on its $9bn in revenues.
Source: The Usual Suspects: tax office dump lays bare Australia’s biggest tax dodgers – Michael West
Last week, the White House released a proposed framework for the regulation of cryptocurrency. The document gives the green light to regulators to continue crafting rules around the industry, and even explores the creation of a “CBDC”: a central bank digital currency. Actor, writer, and crypto skeptic Ben McKenzie joins Ryan Grim to discuss the framework and the future (or lack thereof) of the crypto industry.
Transcript coming soon.
Offenders can intercept payment invoices, or create their own, and funnel victims’ funds into their own accounts. Businesses and individuals make their payments as usual, but unknowingly pay the offender.
via $2.5 billion lost over a decade: Nigerian princes lose their sheen, but scams are on the rise
Investors in embattled Tasmanian whisky distillery Nant are told more than 700 barrels sold to them have never been filled with whisky.
Best mates Oliver Curtis and John Hartman figured out how to make it rain cash. Until the law caught up with them.
Source: The rise and fall of financial traders Oliver Curtis and John Hartman
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has described them as “expensive” and “poor value”.
Source: Add-on insurance products sold by car dealers are failing consumers: ASIC
According to a recent report by RT, Tom Cruise and the Church of Scientology have launched their own 24-hour news network and movie studio. Yeah. So that happened. According to RT’s report: “Trying to capture the success of Rupert Murdoch, Vladimir Putin (redacted) …
Source: Tom Cruise Wants To Reach ‘Every Person On Earth’ With New Scientology TV AnonHQ
Welcome to the lucrative, predatory world of subprime car loans.
Major defense contractors celebrate mass murder and terrorism, boasting that it is good for their bottom lines.
Source: Weapons Makers Caught on Tape Celebrating the Financial Benefits of ISIS and Syrian War AnonHQ
Up to a third of Aboriginal people in remote towns are being ripped off by financial scams involving funeral pre-payments, pay-day lending or excessive interest rates on loans for household essentials such as a fridge.
Legal Aid NSW has called for the federal government to act on the Financial System Inquiry’s proposal to allow targeted bans of unfair practices.
Legal Aid senior solicitor Jemima McCaughan said salesmen are preying on high infant mortality and youth suicide rates among Aboriginal communities to sell high-cost funeral insurance plans to families to cover their children from a very young age.
“The younger you sign up, the more you will pay,” she said.
“Aboriginal people tend to attend and contribute to more funerals due to social and cultural obligations, and a larger kinship network, so having a way to pay for funerals is important to a lot of Aboriginal people.”
But the contracts can end up costing tens of thousands of dollars.
A Legal Aid program sending solicitors into four communities, Dareton, Lake Cargelligo, Condoblin and Murrin Bridge, to assist 350 Aboriginal families, will be expanded across the state in 2015.
“These issues are so prevalent that in some communities as many as 30 per cent of the population have sought – and received – legal help with these money worries,” said NSW Attorney-General Brad Hazzard.
One Aboriginal elder, John, who lived on the aged pension in a remote town, used a payday lender to pay for his car registration and living expenses after he took temporary care of his grandchildren.
When Legal Aid intervened, John had paid $6500 for $3500 in credit over 18 months, continued to pay $130 a fortnight from his pension and still owed $2500 on the contract.
Legal Aid found the contract breached consumer protection laws, and was able to get $1500 refunded.
Ms McCaughan said Aboriginal people on low incomes are paying a quarter of their wage on consumer leases for a fridge or other essential items because they are excluded from mainstream financial products, and aren’t told the full cost of the contract.
The inquiry has recommended that the financial regulator be able to target bans to conduct relating to certain classes of people. Banning consumer leases from being marketed in Aboriginal communities would prevent families getting into financial difficulty, she said.
“We think a prohibition on unfair trading will fill the gap. What we see is a lot of business models dependent on taking advantage of the vulnerable,” said Ms McCaughan.
Legal Aid has encouraged Aboriginal communities to put up “do not knock” stickers on letter boxes, which is helping, she said.
“There is a real capacity to improve the information people have and share information to strengthen the community. The Koori grapevine works very well.”
The solicitors are raising awareness of No Interest Loan providers.
Superannuation products are also a problem, because the preservation age is often higher than the life expectancy of Aboriginal people.
Aboriginal people have been unable to locate the superannuation of deceased family members, and have difficulty accessing death benefit funds, because of proof of identity requirements.
Low birth registrations, multiple names, and the difficulty of accessing documents from remote communities are hurdles, Legal Aid found.
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