ASIC investigating Benchmark Private Wealth and the high-life-loving couple at its centre
AUSSIE couple Braiden Marlborough and Maighan Brown live the high life on private jets and flaunt their wealth online. But a major investigation may be about to ground them for good.
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EXCLUSIVE
IN the Marlborough family, even the dog travels in style.
Meet Braiden Marlborough and wife Maighan Brown, the private-jet-loving couple whose tuxedo-clad shih tzu Bobby was driven into their wedding last year in a remote-control Mercedes SUV. When Braiden’s father Richard declared bankruptcy recently, he listed among his assets a Rolls Royce worth $640,000.
The trio are now embroiled in a major investigation by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, which alleges a failed wealth-creation business called Members Alliance has been rebirthed repeatedly to avoid creditors who are owed more than $40 million.
Richard Marlborough was a director of many of the 36 companies in the Members Alliance group, while Braiden and Maighan held senior roles.
RELATED: Home and hoaxed — inside the Members Alliance fiasco
Prior to its demise in 2016, Members Alliance convinced thousands of ordinary Australians nationally to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for mostly crummy investment properties. It is suspected of tax avoidance, fraud and failing to pay workers.
Investigations by police and the Australian Taxation Office, plus Richard’s plunge into bankruptcy, could have seen the music stop. Instead, Ms Brown and her husband resurfaced at a new group called Benchmark Private Wealth — alleged by ASIC to have inherited the income streams, clients and 50 staff of Members Alliance.
On the surface it appeared Benchmark was totally controlled by Members Alliance’s lawyer Liam Young. However, ASIC suspected that wasn’t the reality.
MORE: Bank ‘miracle’ sees families escape Members Alliance nightmare
So two months ago it applied for a Queensland Supreme Court order for the appointment of a liquidator to Benchmark. It also wanted an order for a report by the liquidator into potential breaches of the Corporations Act.
In an affidavit for the application, ASIC investigator Paul Dunn accused Richard Marlborough of illegally pulling the strings at Benchmark as a “shadow director”.
The order was granted and liquidator Mike McCann’s report alleges as many as 10 sections may have been broken.
Mr McCann’s report accuses Richard Marlborough of “improper use of position”, “reckless or intentional breach of duty” and “managing a corporation while disqualified” due to being a bankrupt. He owes the ATO $27 million in tax and penalties.
Mr McCann, of Grant Thornton, says Mr Marlborough told him he wasn’t involved in Benchmark and had never set foot in its Gold Coast office. But when Mr McCann checked, a very different story emerged. He claims he was told Mr Marlborough negotiated senior employee pay agreements and sat in on sales meetings “during which staff were advised that (his) involvement with the meetings should not be discussed”.
Mr McCann also says in his report Ms Brown told him “she was not aware she was a director” of Benchmark Property and provided a statutory declaration. However, Mr McCann says he then “located an original executed consent by Ms Brown to be appointed as a director”. His report says Ms Brown therefore may have breached corporations law by failing to help him do his job — he was not provided with a report as to the affairs of the business. An intentionally false declaration can lead to up to four years’ jail.
While Benchmark appears to belong to Mr Young and his wife, Mr McCann’s report says they are not the beneficial owners. He says at the heart of the group is a structured finance trust, whose primary beneficiary is Braiden Marlborough. Mr McCann doesn’t accuse Braiden of any law breaches.
Still, Mr Dunn’s affidavit says “director loans” from Benchmark to Mr Young were transferred to Braiden’s bank account to his father with “no apparent reason”.
Mr McCann says Mr Young may have “aided and abetted” Corporations Act contraventions by Richard Marlborough, which is in itself a breach. He also alleges breaches by Mr Young for failing to keep financial records and for trading while insolvent. ASIC also alleges insolvency.
Benchmark Private Wealth owes creditors at least $2 million, including $1.1 million to the ATO and $418,000 of unpaid super to workers. Likewise, Members Alliance failed to pay tax and super. But the scale of the failure was much larger. Mr McCann told News Corp Australia the ATO was likely owed “in excess of $15 million” and others a further $26 million.
Braiden and his wife, along with Mr Young, held senior roles at Benchmark too.
ASIC submissions to the court say there are many similarities between Members Alliance and Benchmark and that in its view, the transition of income streams may have been phoenix activity. The submissions also alleges a “repeat of this phoenix activity” between Benchmark and Mr Young’s new operation, Boundary Street Advisory.
A lawyer for Braiden Marlborough, his wife and his father said “material filed in respect of the Benchmark proceedings contains false, defamatory and inaccurate allegations” which were “strongly denied”. Mr Young, who once worked at ASIC, said the allegations against him were false, baseless and “completely unfounded”.
Members Alliance is suspected of duping lenders into handing over money for work that hadn’t been done by resubmitting old progress payment forms without even changing the dates. A Queensland Building and Construction Commission investigation also alleged investors were tricked into releasing funds after receiving photos said to show construction at their site only for it to emerge the pictures were of other properties.
MEANWHILE, secret documents reveal QBCC investigators’ desperate pleas for extra resources to scrutinise Members Alliance.
The documents, released under freedom of information laws after a 15-month fight, show the commission’s compliance investigations unit (CIU) formally briefed superiors three times in a bid to set up a five-person investigation team for what they had dubbed Operation Bravo Siam.
Within three months of receiving the first complaint about Members Alliance, the CIU had identified at least 93 consumers across the country — including 20 in NSW, nine in Victoria, 21 from WA, two from SA and nine from Queensland — were facing an average loss of $130,000 each or a combined $12-14 million on questionable builds in the sunshine state.
A briefing note the CIU prepared in January 2016 claimed “most victims are interstate and rely on photographs of progress from Members Alliance. In many cases, the photographs do not depict the victim’s dwelling … some victims believe their property is at lockup stage when in fact there is nothing more than a slab”.
The briefing note raised “risks” including media scrutiny “given the amount of homeowners victimised and the sums involved”.
However, there is no evidence their superiors listened.
In March CIU investigators were instructed to “hold off” Siam and help out with other work. In May an email was received with the subject line “instructions from compliance manager to cease investigation”. The rest was withheld.
A QBCC spokesman said it was the only building regulator to proactively investigate and prosecute wealth-creation companies. He said a $40,000 fine had been imposed on Members Alliance group building companies for doing unlicensed work. And the allegedly related Benchmark Private Wealth group had pleaded guilty to doing unlicensed building work. The fine was $3750 and no conviction was recorded.
“The QBCC took all appropriate action available,” the spokesman said.
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