By Noel Towell and Kishor Napier-Raman
It would be pretty clear to most grown-ups what used to go on at the Ponytails bar in a red-light district just outside Manila.
So why would the Financial Times, a private investigator working for the son of a former PM and our very own Australian Federal Police feel the need to go snooping around in the venue’s affairs?
Former MP George Christensen.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
It’s quite the yarn. Back in 2019, this masthead reported former Dawson MP George Christensen had been a regular at the now defunct club in a satellite city of the Philippines capital.
Christensen’s frequent trips to the country had been investigated by the AFP, which found no evidence of illegality but raised concerns he could be open to compromise.
But as revealed in a new book by Financial Times journalist Dan McCrum documenting the spectacular collapse of dodgy German payment processor Wirecard, the Christensen story got the attention of hedge fund manager John Hempton and his buddy Alex Turnbull, son of former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.
The duo had been on a crusade against Wirecard for some time. Hempton harboured a decade-long (correct) hunch the payment provider was into some seriously bad stuff – fraud and money laundering for pornographers, Russian state actors and mercenaries.
Hempton was the original source for McCrum’s reporting on the Watergate of European finance and, along with Turnbull, had done plenty of unorthodox investigating of the company.
So once the Christensen stories broke, and with the duo convinced Wirecard was using shady “cutout” payment services – allowing customers to hide their spending from law enforcement – in the Philippines, Turnbull sent a private investigator to buy a beer at Ponytails. The trip proved the bar had been using the same Wirecard cutout service. In the end, McCrum and Hempton, who’d been shorting the stock for more than a decade, were right about Wirecard, despite legal threats, espionage and attacks from German regulators.
But any gains made through Wirecard’s self-combustion didn’t offset what Hempton lost shorting the company when the rest of the world looked the other way and helped pump up its share price.
“Wirecard is our bete noire stock ... a loser on which we were eventually right,” he told investors.
TONY NOT FOR TURNING
Success always comes at a cost, as the ABC is discovering after rising star Tony Armstrong’s big Logies win. The News Breakfast sports presenter is the talk of the industry after his triumph in the most popular newcomer category on the Gold Coast on Sunday night, and some talk turned to potential poaching attempts by Aunty’s commercial rivals, with online speculation that offers had already been made.
Credit: Matt Golding
CBD has been told, by ABC sources not authorised to speak publicly, that News Breakfast bosses are concerned about hanging onto Armstrong but believe they could convince the former footy player a commercial outfit would cramp the easy-going style that has made him such a hit with audiences.
The man himself told us on Monday there was no move on the cards.
“That was actually news to me, when I read about it,” Armstrong said. “I’ve got a good relationship with Channel 10, I go on The Project a bit and I’ve got a good relationship with Fox Footy as well. But there’s been no ‘come over here full-time’ or anything like that.”
TIM’S NEXT MOVE
What are the Victorian Liberals going to do with Tim Smith?
The car-crash MP for Kew’s latest wheeze was declaring on Tuesday that he would “cross the floor” of state parliament and vote against the first legislative phase of the Andrews government’s Indigenous treaty process.
Smith’s fresh act of defiance, after publicly encouraging the Liberals to abandon “loud, entitled and rich” seats like Kew, has his colleagues scratching their heads about what to do next.
Tim Smith.Credit: Justin McManus
People close to the campaign of Jess Wilson, the former Josh Frydenberg staffer chosen to contest Kew for the Liberals in November’s election, say – speaking on condition of anonymity – that Smith is deliberately cruelling the party’s chances in his old seat.
He told CBD on Tuesday he was not bent on sabotage, simply speaking his mind now he was unshackled from party discipline.
Wilson declined to comment on Tuesday. But some of her colleagues have been thinking this thing through.
“We’ve been workshopping options for where he might go,” one senior eastern suburbs Liberal quipped. “He could join the Transport Matters Party and campaign for road lanes to be widened by 100 metres. Or he could join Animal Justice and fight to conserve Jaguars.”
JUDITH NEILSON SPENDS BIG
All is not well among the generous media benefactors at the Judith Neilson Institute, with reports in this masthead of four directors resigning and widespread anger at the top.
But JNI is a cushy gig for those willing to navigate the turbulence. The institute’s employee expenses last year of $2,635,069 outweigh the $2,104,435 spent on those generous grants and donations to journalists.
JNI has just 12 full-time-equivalent staff, meaning employees are paid on average nearly $220,000 a year. Imagine wanting to leave?
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