Aussie Post chief Ahmed Fahour loves his privacy

Illustration: Rod Clement.

Aussie Post’s newly gonged $5.6 million-a-year man Ahmed Fahour is a supreme networker and self-promoter.

But when it comes to his personal affairs, Fahour, who we now know is one of the world’s best paid postal execs, prefers a more clandestine approach.

He and his board spectacularly failed to keep his massive pay under wraps, with even the Prime Minister weighing in against the stonking package.

It follows a similar pattern to that employed by Fahour elsewhere in his affairs.

When the former NAB banker bought his historic mansion “Invergowrie” in Hawthorn for more than $20m in 2013 from Globe International co-founder Peter Hill, Fahour tried to hide the buy behind an intermediary company established by top-tier Melbourne law firm ­Arnold Bloch Leibler.

That company, Finchway Pty Ltd, is still listed as Invergowrie’s owner, as Fahour dishes out ­another $5m on a reno to the home.

Ahmed Fahour

Late last year Fahour and wife Dionnie Fahour called in the services of ABL again, this time to set up a fresh private vehicle, Milorain Pty Ltd, in which the couple control equal shares.

While Fahour lists his contact as Aussie Post HQ, his wife’s details show that the pair have also enlisted the advisory services of PwC partner Rohan Geddes, who specialises in giving tax ­advice to high net worth indi­viduals.

Wonder if there are any other public servants requiring Geddes’ services?

Mistress won’t let go

Seven boss Tim Worner’s former mistress Amber Harrison continued her all-out, one-woman assault on billionaire Kerry Stokes’s empire last night.

The former Seven executive assistant took to Twitter to publish a statement she sent to law firm Allens Linklaters, which interviewed Harrison as part of its partner Richard Harris’s investigation into the Worner affair.

The Allens report cleared the Seven boss of wrongdoing, but Harrison’s statement raises a host of specific allegations against her former lover. These include allegations of cocaine use in the workplace, ­claims of sexual harassment and questionable expenses. Last night Seven would not comment and stood by the company’s investigation.

Harrison claims the note was sent to Allens two days before the firm’s final report was given to the Seven board. Harrison is now questioning whether her allegations were even made known to the Stokes-chaired board, let alone investigated.

The day before the report came out, independent Seven director and Gilbert + Tobin partner Sheila McGregor resigned from the board without explanation.

Meanwhile shares in the media empire were down almost another 2 per cent to 75c yesterday . It wasn’t a great day for any of the listed television stocks, with Ten down 1.2 per cent and Nine off 0.5 per cent.

But, for a fourth consecutive trading day, the damage was worst at Seven, where the sex-governance-and-expenses scandal has clearly disturbed investors in the family network.

Seven reports to the market next Wednesday. We can’t wait.

Friends in high places

Back to the snail mail. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday declared Ahmed Fahour’s $5.6m pay packet “too high”.

Handily for the PM, he’s not short of Liberal connections to the Australia Post board to make sure chairman John Stanhope sorts it out when his directors next determine Fahour’s remuneration.

Back in December 2015, months into Turnbull’s reign as PM, former president of the Liberal National Party of Queensland Bruce McIver joined the board.

McIver’s appointment was followed by former minister for veterans’ affairs Michael Ronaldson, who was given the Australia Post director gig after he left parliament last year.

Burke’s new digs

After about an 18-month absence, shadow minister for environment and water Tony Burke has put some financial skin back into his southwestern Sydney electorate of Watson.

Burke, also the manager of opposition business, doesn’t appear to have owned a home in his seat since he sold out of Roselands in mid-2015.

The sale was part of a broader rethink of Burke’s property portfolio, with the pollie also flogging an apartment that he owned in the Canberra suburb of Kingston at about the same time.

That was all amid attacks on Burke by the then Abbott government over costs associated with a trip he took to Europe with his staffer, now partner, Skye Laris, which
came in the wake of the Bronwyn Bishop Choppergate scandal.

Turning his back on the big smoke, Burke then forked out the grand sum of $220,000 for a rustic retreat in Tassie’s Jackeys Marsh — think wood stove, solar panels and combustible dunny — and has now seen his way clear to buy back into Watson.

This time he’s putting down roots in the suburb of Punchbowl with Laris, via a three-bedroom brick veneer pad that didn’t break the $1m mark.

Elsewhere over summer, Victorian Liberal senator Jane Hume bought an investment property in Malvern, Greens senator Larissa Waters moved house in Queensland, from inner-city Bardon to suburban Pullenvale, while senator Pauline Hanson’s sale of an apartment on the Gold Coast that she owns with her son Adam has failed to settle due to legal complications.

Hooked on The Boss

Cindy Hook, the boss of big four accountancy firm Deloitte Australia, is off to see Bruce Springsteen at Sydney’s Olympic Park tonight.

It will be the eighth Springsteen show Hook has seen on his 2017 Australia and New Zealand tour, bringing her lifetime tally to 68 shows. And she’s got the files to prove it.

“I am an accountant and keep a spreadsheet of every concert I have been to and all the set lists I have ever heard,” Hook told us ahead of Springsteen’s show tonight.

Cindy Hook and The Boss

Hook won’t quite achieve perfect attendance this tour. She’ll miss the two Brisbane shows because of a Global Deloitte Leadership meeting in Toronto, and a midweek gig in Christchurch is also being forfeited.

All up, she’ll get to 11 of 14 shows.

The American-born Deloitte boss’s love of The Boss goes back to 1987 and the Tunnel of Love tour.

“I was in row 12. He played ‘Rosalita’ and came down into the crowd,” she recalls.

“I was hooked.”

More proof of her impressive fandom is on her car number plate: “Bn2Run”. Those are some “Tramp” credentials.