The arrival of a letter to a modest house in Grafton in March 2020 caused shockwaves to reverberate among crime kingpin George Alex’s syndicate.
Federal police were listening as one of the conspirators said of the impending disaster: “We’ve rode our luck too long and ... now we got caught with our hands in the f---ing cookie jar.”
George Alex outside the NSW Supreme Court at Darlinghurst in August.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
The disaster was an audit by the Australian Tax Office (ATO), which resulted in a missive to one of their “dummy” directors informing him that he was personally liable for the $4 million his company had failed to remit in PAYG withholding tax.
The “corporate patsy” Andrew Hegedus, 56, who works with an Indigenous charity in Grafton, in northern NSW, was most upset at this turn of events, the NSW Supreme Court would later hear.
Earlier this month, after a six-month trial, the jury found Alex and four of his crew – Pasquale “Peter China” Loccisano, Gordon McAndrew, Mark Bryers and Lindsay Kirschberg – guilty of defrauding the ATO of more than $10 million and then using the proceeds of their crime to buy luxury cars, houses and support their lifestyles.
During the 110 hours of intercepted calls played to the jury, it became clear that good help is hard to find, especially when you are running a multimillion-dollar criminal syndicate ripping off the Tax Office to the tune of $100,000 per week.
“I’m fuming,” complained Alex to Lindsay Kirschberg, who ran the syndicate’s money laundering operation. “These blokes don’t even know to read and write”, and one of them “has just got out of jail; he’s not a good guy,” said Alex in April 2019.
Alex was referring to the tricky business of finding people to act as “fronts” for their dodgy entities.
One of their short-lived dummy directors, Marino Sotiropoulos, is currently facing the prospect of life imprisonment, having been charged with supplying a large commercial quantity of a prohibited drug. He has also been charged with the 2021 kidnapping of his brother-in-law, the former Australian cricketer Stuart MacGill.
Another “front”, Abuzar Sultani, was convicted of murdering five people, while another, extortionist Joe Antoun, was murdered in an underworld dispute.
Before she went bankrupt, Alex’s sister Athina was also a “straw” director.
The jury heard that Alex could not be a director as he had been bankrupted by the ATO in 2011 and, due to his failure to co-operate with his bankruptcy trustee, his bankruptcy has never been discharged.
But he continued to rake in the money while paying no tax. “The margins are good, everyone makes money, there’s a bowl of rice there for everybody”, Alex told Kirschberg in April 2019 before warning him of the dangers of appointing “undesirables” to the crucial roles of dummy directors.
Millions of dollars flowed into the syndicate’s coffers from legitimate labour-hire companies, but one-third of the earnings should have been remitted to the ATO in PAYG withholding tax. Instead, the syndicate would install a dummy director in the company responsible for paying the tax. That company would then “crash and burn”, owing millions to the ATO as well as workers’ entitlements.
But with one particular company, they rode their luck for too long.
In April 2019, Andrew Hegedus became the straw director of Australia Priority Invoicing (API). The Grafton local was introduced to the scheme by Mark Bryers, a New Zealand fraudster who’d gone bankrupt there in 2009 owing $200 million. George Alex had installed Bryers to be the “headmaster” overseeing the tax-fraud business.
Describing his role as a “shadow director”, Hegedus, who wasn’t charged and who gave evidence for the prosecution, told the jury he’d been paid $2000 a week for his services.
More than $14 million was paid into API’s accounts in a seven-month period until December 2019. Intercepted calls throughout that period show Hegedus receiving instructions from Bryers on what to do with the millions of dollars flowing into API’s bank account.
In one call in September 2019, Bryers told him, “But you’re also gonna see an extraordinary amount at your account today, probably for 250.” Bryers then instructed Hegedus to move $250,000 to Kirschberg’s company, Adelphi, which was used to launder the money.
Phones ran hot
Eleven months after signing on as a dummy director, Hegedus was horrified when an official letter arrived at his Grafton home.
In a letter dated 4 March 2020, the Deputy Commissioner of Taxation informed him that, as a result of an audit, he was personally liable for the $4 million in PAYG withholding tax that API should have remitted for the period May to December 2019.
Andrew Hegedus received a $4m demand from the ATO.
The ATO’s letter of demand to Hegedus sent the conspirators into a spin, and the phones ran hot.
In a panic, Hegedus told the conspirators he’d been trying to pay the construction workers’ wages, but API’s account had been garnisheed by the ATO.
McAndrew, who had worked for 30 years in banking, recounted this worrying turn of events to Kirschberg, who replied: “Well, that’s going to be a disaster … things are going to blow up, aren’t they?”
The pair discussed that the ATO would now be “chasing the money”, which the conspirators said had “now been moved overseas.”
In a later conversation with Kevin McHugh, who ran the Queensland labour-hire companies, McAndrew observed, “We knew at some point in time our luck was going to run out … we’ve rode our luck too long, and now we got caught with our hands in the f---ing cookie jar.”
McAndrew then phoned Bryers saying: “The longer we pushed this, the more chance there was of us gettin’ caught … we’ve pushed the envelope too far,” McAndrew told Bryers.
George Alex had been pushing the envelope too far for too long.
For years, Alex and McHugh – who died before the trial began – had been using their links to allegedly corrupt union officials to secure benefits for their companies, such as enterprise bargaining agreements (EBAs).
“With his savvy and his cunning, he was able to build one of the biggest labour-hire companies in Queensland,” the jury was told of McHugh.
‘Unlawful intimidation’
In 2003, McHugh was mentioned adversely in the final report of the Royal Commission into the Building and Construction Industry. Justice Terence Cole found union officials had used “unlawful intimidation and deceit” to promote the business interests of McHugh’s labour-hire company.
Kevin McHugh arriving at Central Local Court in July 2020.Credit: SMH
McHugh’s son Jamie, a union organiser, was found to have engaged in “unlawful conduct” by threatening illegal industrial action unless his father’s labour-hire firm was used on certain construction sites.
More than a decade later, graphic phone calls played at the later royal commission into union corruption implicated Alex in corrupt activities. Evidence indicated he was paying a weekly bribe of $2500 to CFMEU officials.
The commission heard that in August 2014, then-NSW CFMEU boss Brian “Sparkles” Parker signed three EBAs with a company that Alex secretly controlled. Union delegate Mario Barrios raised concerns with Parker that Alex’s companies were being “phoenixed” – an illegal practice where companies go into liquidation owing money to creditors, only to start up again with the debts left behind and the assets moved to a fresh company.
While the CFMEU was running a campaign against this practice because workers’ were losing their entitlements, certain officials were happy to turn a blind eye to Alex’s phoenixing activities.
Barrios complained about Alex in a phone call to Parker days after the EBAs had been signed. “These people, they just keep rebirthing themselves with a different name ... and they haven’t fixed the problem from three companies ago, never mind the last one,” Barrios said to Parker.
Barrios went to the police after he received a threatening call from Alex, who’d said: “I want to know why you’re talking so much shit about me … I’m a very patient person, Mario, but I’m running out of patience with you. Where do you work?”
‘I won’t stop’
An intercepted call played at the commission revealed Parker’s fury at hearing Barrios had gone to the police. Parker told another union official, Robert Kera, that Barrios would “end up f---ing doing a stint in hospital, I’m f---ing telling you because I won’t stop.”
In 2015, Alex was convicted and sentenced to 16 months imprisonment, which was served in the community by way of an intensive corrections order, for the “extremely violent and menacing” texts he’d sent to his former girlfriend and her mother as he was waiting to give evidence at the royal commission.
“Wait til the commission is over … You know my crew hates you or anyone to do with you. Lettin’ em loose. You f---ing deal with them, hot shot.”
In another message, he wrote, “Ur a waste of space. Neck yourself. Before I get too u.” This was sent within days of threatening Barrios.
To her mother, Alex wrote: “Ur husband is lucky I haven’t sent my men to his office to get all my money I spent on her face nose ... ur lucky I have a heart. U tell the prostitute if she ever comes back she will get hurt”.
At his sentencing over the menacing messages, his lawyer told the court that Alex, who was “highly thought of by his peers”, was moving on with his life. “You can have no fear of seeing Alex in this court again,” the lawyer said.
Alex, along with the other four men, will be sentenced for tax fraud and money laundering in November.
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