‘I love a cunning plan’: How crime boss cut CFMEU-endorsed and tax-dodging deals

George Alex outside court.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

Senior CFMEU figures secretly helped organised crime kingpin George Alex build a sprawling and corrupt labour hire empire, despite repeated warnings he was an underworld figure who had previously bribed union officials and ripped off workers and the Australian Taxation Office.

The extent of Alex’s corrupt dealings with the CFMEU can be laid bare after he was convicted this week of tax evasion and money laundering as part of an illegal scheme that federal police found relied on Alex’s success “leveraging contacts in the trade unions” and inside large building firms.

The federal police case was confined to $10 million prosecutors argued was unlawfully withheld from the ATO.

But confidential police intelligence and phone taps, never presented during the trial, indicate Alex also used his building industry operation to move millions of dollars generated by drug and tobacco trafficking undertaken by his criminal associates, including jailed Sydney crime boss Mick Ibrahim.

The Building Bad investigation by this masthead, The Australian Financial Review and 60 Minutes can also reveal that, even though he faces the possibility of a jail sentence, pockets of the construction industry empire built by Alex over 15 years continue to thrive under the control of his former business partners and associates.

Despite having their own underworld links and being pursued by authorities for ripping off the Tax Office, several of Alex’s associates maintain deep ties with the CFMEU, securing union-endorsed enterprise bargaining agreements (EBAs) and being pushed on major projects by select CFMEU officers as recently as the past 12 months.

A key task facing the CFMEU’s administrator, Mark Irving, KC, will be examining the Alex empire’s union networks, as well as EBAs he or his associates helped obtain for labour hire and traffic management firms in NSW, Queensland and Victoria.

Police and court documents, along with briefings from confidential CFMEU and building firm sources, reveal that Alex successfully courted select union officials for years.

Alex maintained and cultivated his relationships with union officials and delegates even after he was outed in industry circles over a decade ago – and then publicly exposed by the 2015 Heydon royal commission – as a thuggish underworld player indifferent to his legal obligations to properly pay tax or his workers’ entitlements.

The federal police case that led to Alex’s conviction this week names him as “the principal director” of a “criminal syndicate” engaging in tax fraud and money laundering via the operation of construction industry labour hire businesses. It also singles him out as “the principal beneficiary of the proceeds of these crimes”.

Darren Greenfield speaks at a CFMEU protest last week against the union being forced into administration.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

According to court filings, police secretly monitored Alex between 2018 and mid-2020 as he “met with senior figures in the trade unions and in the building construction industry” and sought to “secure favourable labour hire contracts for the Tier One labour hire entities that he controlled”.

During a police surveillance operation in March 2020, agents observed Alex meet CFMEU NSW boss Darren Greenfield on the Gold Coast. There is no suggestion that Greenfield engaged in any criminal conduct, but union insiders queried his decision to deal with Alex after the latter had been exposed as a senior crime figure known for rorting workers and acting corruptly.

Greenfield was one of 11 high-ranking executives sacked in late August by Irving, who also terminated the roles of more than 200 unpaid union officials.

Police alleged Alex’s syndicate also enlisted former CFMEU officials to act as dummy directors for “franchisees” of one of his shonky Queensland labour hire firms, GHRC Services, which was at the centre of the tax fraud.

Tribunal filings reveal Tim Jarvis, a former CFMEU Queensland and NSW organiser, was recruited as the industrial relations manager for GHRC.

Jarvis signed off on the agreements GHRC secured with the CFMEU in 2019 and 2020, including the deal setting conditions on the Queensland government’s $4 billion Queens Wharf project.

In 2019, he was appointed “in name only” as director of GHRC Services Qld Franchise No. 2, according to the police statement of facts as part of the Alex case.

Chad Bragdon, another ex-CFMEU Queensland official, was made a director of another GHRC franchisee at the same time and also, according to the police, a director in name only.

Neither Jarvis nor Bragdon has been accused of wrongdoing. Jarvis did not respond and Bragdon could not be reached for comment.

Damning findings

But the allegations that Alex’s illegal operation relied on his ties to serving and former CFMEU officials echo the picture painted of him in 2015 by the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, conducted by former High Court judge Dyson Heydon.

They underscore how Alex, and his backers in the union and building firms, disregarded Heydon’s damning findings to continue their dealings in the construction sector.

In the final commission report, Heydon concluded that a senior CFMEU insider had regularly visited Alex’s NSW home to collect $2500 bribe payments which Alex would sometimes stash in a drawer in his bathroom.

Although the commission recommended prosecutors consider charges against Alex and the union bribe-taker (who cannot be named for legal reasons) no case was ever filed because legislative prohibitions prevented the director of public prosecutions using key royal commission evidence in any subsequent criminal court case.

Instead, the union official was promoted within the CFMEU and continued to back firms run by Alex’s current and former associates, including one of Sydney’s most successful labour hire companies.

This firm is run by two of Alex’s former business partners, including a businessman previously named in the Heydon royal commission as facilitating the payment of $5000 in bribes in return for favourable CFMEU treatment.

The CFMEU’s NSW branch has not only granted the firm – which this masthead has chosen not to name for legal reasons – hard-to-obtain labour hire EBAs but pushed it onto major building sites, even securing a recent deal with a major builder that required it to subcontract with the firm on key NSW government projects as one of only four union-endorsed labour hire firms.

Various state and federal investigations between 2011 and 2021 also uncovered detailed evidence of Alex’s relationship with key figures in Australia’s underworld, including his more recent dealings with Sydney drug trafficker Mick Ibrahim and his previous relationship with Melbourne’s Mick Gatto (who in 2012 helped Alex curry favour with the Victorian CFMEU branch).

Michael Ibrahim allegedly instructed his nephew to distribute fraud proceeds to family and associates. Credit: Edwina Pickles

The federal police agents who ultimately charged Alex with money laundering and tax offences secretly tapped more than 1000 calls Ibrahim made from jail to Alex, including one call in which Ibrahim told Alex “we’re not used to paying tax”.

The phone taps, along with other evidence, led police to suspect that Ibrahim gave Alex between $1 million to $3 million in dirty money to clean via his labour hire firms, front companies and various bank accounts.

‘I need you to sit down’

Police were also secretly listening when Alex plotted with disgraced New Zealand businessman Mark Bryers – who was also convicted for his role in the Alex-led financial crime ring – about how to stay a step ahead of the federal police by using dummy directors to shield Alex from scrutiny as he pocketed the tax he should have been paying the ATO.

“I need you to sit down and really listen to this. I have a cunning plan,” Bryers told Alex in October 2019.

“I want to get to a point that if anybody gets asked about who owns, ultimately, this group of companies, that the federals [AFP], the ATO ... can’t get to the f---en truth.”

Alex responded: “I love a cunning plan.”

Despite Alex being a bankrupt and banned from controlling any companies, police proved he unlawfully continued to operate as a “shadow director” for labour hire entities and continued to meet union figures to secure favourable labour hire contracts.

Alex’s conviction this week is the latest chapter in his controversial rise as one of Australia’s labour hire kings.

The son of Greek migrants, Alex, who is due to face a sentencing hearing in November, liked to portray himself as a man of charity, giving jobs or forming alliances with those who had fallen on hard times.

The facade helped him explain why his business partners included convicted criminals, such as killer and since-murdered Hells Angels enforcer Zeljko “Steve” Mitrovic and bikie drug trafficker Peter Sidirourgos.

Hells Angels bikie Zeljko “Steve” Mitrovic was killed in 2013 at his transport business in the western Sydney suburb of Wetherill Park.

After Comanchero Ian Clissold left prison following a long stint inside for murder, Alex employed him as his driver, minder and sometimes union delegate.

A decade ago, when armed robber and attempted murderer Adriano Manna left jail jobless, his father, a senior construction union organiser ostensibly overseeing Alex’s firms, asked Alex to hire his son in an arrangement approved by then-union boss Brian Parker.

Parker was, before he resigned from the union in 2018, one of Alex’s strongest supporters.

Alex also employed the now-dead Sydney Islamist extremist Khaled Sharrouf after Sharrouf left jail in 2009, having been convicted for his role in a terrorism plot.

Khaled Sharrouf was convicted for his role in a terror plot.

In the intensely competitive and rough and tumble world of construction, Alex’s ability to undercut competitors also relied on his suspected phoenixing of many of his firms.

The practice is criminal and involves shifting assets from an indebted company to a new firm to avoid paying creditors, tax or employee entitlements.

Industry and law enforcement sources estimate Alex is linked to well over two dozen phoenixed firms, with the most recent federal police investigation only touching on some of them.

Alex’s criminal contacts were sometimes the frontmen for his phoenixed firms, while he relied on his union contacts to turn a blind eye to the risk its members wouldn’t be paid their full entitlements by the failed firms.

Alex wasn’t without his detractors in the CFMEU. The most vociferous emerged as a whistleblower in 2014 – veteran organiser Brian Fitzpatrick, a gruff union hardman who had demanded Alex repay workers he had ripped off. He was convinced Alex had corrupted the CFMEU.

CFMEU whistleblower Brian Fitzpatrick demanded Alex repay workers he had ripped off.Credit: Peter Braig

Fitzpatrick, who would become a vital whistleblower at the Heydon royal commission, claimed that after he confronted Alex, he was met with an alleged death threat from the man who would come to lead the CFMEU, Darren Greenfield. Greenfield denied the claim, but Heydon concluded he had intimidated Fitzpatrick.

Prior to his death from cancer, Fitzpatrick had told confidants he hoped both Alex and Greenfield would face criminal charges.

Just over a year after Alex was arrested, in mid-2020, Greenfield was charged over allegations he was bribed by a Chinese plastering firm.

The case has no connection to Alex and the now former union boss denies all wrongdoing.

An apology to businessman Michael Ibrahim

A version of this article appeared on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald on 4 September 2024. It made serious allegations of criminality about a number of persons.

That article contained a serious error, being the inclusion of a photograph of businessman Michael Ibrahim.

Businessman Michael Ibrahim had nothing whatsoever to do with the people or allegations in that front page article. The Herald apologises to Mr Ibrahim and his family for the shock and the hurt that this caused.

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