Tidbits from the Transcripts - construction inquiry to receive list of suspect liquidators

Senator Doug Cameron will soon have a list of liquidators
connected to repeated construction sector failures.

A list of liquidators of interest is to be delivered to the Senate References Committee's inquiry into insolvency in the construction industry.

At the inquiry's final public hearing in Canberra, senior officials from the Department of Employment told chief inquisitor Senator Doug Cameron how as part of administering the Fair Entitlements Guarantee scheme (FEG), they gathered intelligence about individuals who preside over entities which repeatedly collapse with insufficient assets to pay employee entitlements.

Included in that intelligence are the names of those liquidators who consistently appear as the suspect directors' preferred appointees.

"Every six months FEG provides a list of data to ASIC that includes the case names, the amounts paid, the directors' names and the liquidator's names," FEG branch manager Sue Saunders told the inquiry.

"Every six months we provide data to the ATO that is more specific to the phoenixing agenda in the sense that it provides the names of every case and every director where the same director has been listed for more than one case under FEG.

"The information we gather about the cases that become insolvent and leave unpaid employee entitlements to be met under GEERS or FEG is useful intelligence to feed into the other range of information the ATO and ASIC are collecting that builds their risk profile around certain operators in the industry," Saunders said.

Cameron, who has maintained the inquiry's focus on the relationship between industry operators, insolvency practitioners and banks, asked the two public servants if they knew the insolvency practitioners for every FEG payout.

Saunders and acting general manager Debbie Mitchell confirmed they knew and agreed to provide the names to the inquiry. "They (ASIC and the ATO) get all the directors' names and all of the amounts (paid)," Mitchell added.

The identities of the liquidators must be supplied to the inquiry shortly, given it is required to report on its findings by December 3, 2015.

Since the commencement of public hearings in June, the inquiry has heard that the construction sector owes the ATO $5.5 billion in outstanding tax and that up to $3.2 billion is owed to industry participants.

Further reading:

Tidbits from the transcripts - Cameron slams liquidators at construction inquiry

SiNful tale to tell?