AMONG the names of the world’s elite powerbrokers, sports stars and political leaders identified in the Panama Papers, lie many lesser known names of Australians who have had dealings with the obscure law firm.
That includes a run-down motel in western Sydney, whose homeless inhabitants could not seem further removed from the world’s elite accused of billion-dollar tax evasion tactics.
While the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists will not release the full list of companies and people linked to the law firm Mossack Fonseca until early May, the names of some Australians who appear in the documents have already been revealed.
This week the Australian Taxation Office confirmed it was investigating 800 Australians, many of which are linked to a little-known Hong Kong firm called Popular Corporate Service Limited.
The ABC has also identified more than 1000 Australian links in the data including some of the country’s most infamous wheeler dealers.
Here are some of the Australians identified in the Mossack Fonseca leak:
AN OBSCURE MOTEL IN WESTERN SYDNEY
Until now, the budget Warwick Farm Grandstand Motel near Liverpool was probably best known for being the site of violent crimes and the run-down home of desperate families with nowhere else to go.
Last year police were called there after a man was hit with a pickaxe, allegedly by a relative.
Delve a few more years back and you’ll find reports of customers being arrested over possessing a loaded rifle and drugs in their motel room.
But this week the hotel sits alongside the world’s elite, named in the Panama Papers scandal.
Leaks exposed it as one of 77 Australian intermediaries or clients that helped Mossack Fonseca incorporate companies in tax havens. The list also includes accountants and law firms.
The motel set up an offshore company called KDS Incorporated, with both the motel and the company active in Mossack Fonseca’s internal documents.
The ATO tried to wind up the motel’s holding company last year but this action was dismissed.
Neighbours told ABC that the motel was “feral, dodgy and full of drug users and prostitutes”.
A Sunday Telegraph profile of the motel in 2010 described it as a “heartbreak hotel” where single mums and the homeless priced out of the housing market lived in cramped conditions.
A FORMER FAKE OPAL MINER
Maxwell John Reid is best known for being a conman who was sentenced to nine months jail in 2006 for what was Australia’s biggest GST fraud at the time.
Reid, nicknamed “The Weasel”, defrauded the tax office out of $6.9 million between 2000 and 2001.
Mr Reid posed as an opal miner in Coober Pedy and created 49 mining companies to pretend they were digging up opals worth tens of millions of dollars. The ATO then refunded GST payments for fake expenses such as buying earthmoving machinery.
At the time Mr Reid was also an undischarged bankrupt banned in 1990 from operating companies until 2036.
Just weeks after he was released from jail for the fraud, Mr Reid emailed Mossack Fonseca to ask for an escrow account to move $100 million.
These accounts allow people to deposit money into them before the law firm sends that money on as if it were its own money.
Mr Reid has confirmed to the ABC that he asked about the escrow services but denied he has a current account, saying, “Never ever”.
MASTERMIND OF BIZARRE RACING FRAUD
John Patrick Gillespie first came to prominence as the mastermind of Australia’s most infamous racing scandal.
In 1984 Mr Gillespie was involved in painting a horse called Bold Personality, to make it look like a slower horse called Fine Cotton that raced at Brisbane’s Eagle Farm and won.
A combination of white paint, peroxide and brown hair dye was used to disguise the horse.
Mr Gillespie was jailed for four years over his role but was released in the early 1990s.
Soon after he became a founding director of a company called International Millionaire’s Club, which was both incorporated in the British Virgin Islands and the Bahamas by Mossack Fonseca.
Both companies were struck off the registries by 1995 but Mr Gillespie has continued to draw the attention of authorities for other schemes involving race horses, anti-wrinkle cream and famous artworks.
Mr Gillespie’s ring-in is remembered as being a comical and amateurish scam but in 2010 he claimed to have earned $1.8 million from it, but this has been ridiculed by investigators.
“I don’t mind if people think it was a joke or whatever because I walked away with $1.8 million,” Mr Gillespie told The Sunday Mail.
A FORMER TAX EMPLOYEE
Before he started his own company Wealth Safe, Perth-based accountant Warren Black worked at the Australian Taxation Office.
On his website it says his life passion is legally “getting people out of paying tax”.
Mr Black appears in the Panama Papers because he is the director and shareholder of a Mossack Fonseca-managed company called Wealth Grow International Limited.
The company was incorporated in the Seychelles in March 2015, but there is no suggestion Mr Black has done anything illegal.
Mr Black told the ABC he was surprised to hear about the leak but was not worried because his offshore company was completely legal.
“I’ve always been a big believer of minimising taxes as much as you absolutely can, provided you stay within the law,” he said.
DISGRACED STOCK TRADER
Murray Priestley, who is now based in Singapore, was banned in 2013 from providing financial services in Australia for three years.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission banned him after they found the Queensland-based executive was engaged in “deceptive conduct” and offered clients “misleading advice.
ASIC said Mr Priestley told a client that the Aussie Rob Lifestyle Trader software was not based on moving averages, when in fact he did not know how it worked.
At the time Mr Priestley was the chief executive officer of the Lifestyle Group and was also director of a company registered by Mossack Fonseca.
According to the ABC, when Mossack Fonseca found out about the ban, it asked for more information but there was no response. According to the leaked Panama Papers, Mr Priestley and his company Alpha Holdings Management remained active despite the ban.
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