Boon Teen fronts court over kickbacks to foreign businessmen
A disgraced former Melbourne company director provided $3.4m in kickbacks to foreign agents in return for the sale of a student accommodation block in Caulfield East at an inflated price.
South East
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A Melbourne man provided $3.4m in kickbacks to a group of Malaysian businessmen in order to secure the sale of a student accommodation block in Caulfield East, a court has heard
Details of the elaborate plan were laid bare in the County Court on Friday when former company director Boon Teen, 74, of Vermont South, appeared after earlier pleading guilty to a charge of false accounting.
The charge relates to Teen’s involvement in the sale of the building, part-owned by his business Wanissa Properties, to an investment company owned by the government of Malaysia in 2013.
Teen and his business partners were responsible for converting the block of land from residential houses into a multi-level student apartment complex between 2009 and 2013 in what became known as the Dudley International House.
The Malaysian government appointed agents to negotiate the sale with Teen and a price of $17.8m was agreed upon in October 2012.
However, delays in finalising the sale concerned Teen due to financial difficulties he and his business partners were facing.
In early 2012, the agents proposed that the agreed sale price should be increased from $17.8m to $22.6m and the difference should be paid to them.
Teen agreed to the proposal but became concerned how to document his promised payment of $4.7m to the agents for accounting and tax purposes.
He suggested that they send a false invoice to Wanissa Properties for purported services such as consultancy, advisory, marketing and advertising fees.
The arrangement would then permit his company to claim the payment as a tax-deductible business expense.
The building was sold to the Malaysian government.
The prosecution conceded that the charge covered only $3.4m of the $4.7m paid to the agents.
Wanissa Properties was deregistered on September 22, 2021.
As part of its investigation in 2015, the Australian Federal Police recovered thousands of documents, including the false invoices, from a number of properties.
The AFP also intercepted telephone conversation between Teen and others about the property deal.
Teen will be back in court at a later date.
