Cranbrook pair James Kennedy and Ben Scott clash over Kentel’s Luxe Listings deal with Amazon

Ben Scott, left, and James Kennedy pictured in 2018. Things aren’t so friendly these days.

Luxury watch dealer James Kennedy scored a win on Friday against his old Cranbrook classmate Ben Scott. The pair, enmeshed in an eastern suburbs tragedy, are jousting in the NSW Supreme Court over grievances linked to their entertainment company, Kentel Australasia, an entity unlikely to chime with you, beloved reader, but perhaps you’re more familiar with a slick little show named Luxe Listings? It was borne out of the genius of Kentel, picked up by Amazon and went absolutely bonkers for three annoying seasons of cufflink close-ups and heady drone photography.

Scott’s accusing Kennedy of misdeeds during his time as a director of Kentel, claiming that he negotiated a deal with Amazon that undervalued Luxe Listings and lost the men their ownership rights to the show, charges that Kennedy, of course, disputes.

Kennedy retains a majority shareholding in Kentel but resigned as director in 2022, supposedly to distance himself from Scott and certain Sydney characters of ill-repute with whom he is affiliated, namely Fadi Ibrahim, a man with priors and a grim backstory; he lost most of his stomach during a 2009 assassination attempt that left him in a coma.

Fadi Ibrahim. Picture: NewsWire / Simon Bullard

Scott, via his lawyer John Hajje, has done a fine job of embarrassing Kennedy by dispatching subpoenas to brands like Rolex and Patek Phillippe, who’ve understandably wondered what this slapfight is all about, and presumably Scott’s intent is not only to besmirch Kennedy’s name, which he probably has, but to advance a claim that Kennedy tried to use Luxe Listings as a vehicle for product placement to sell more stock at his brick-and-mortar jewellery stores (without, as Scott claims, the benefit of receiving ­commissions).

The court system is such a slow-moving beast, and it will surely keep chewing on this case for some months. But Kennedy did score a small, recent victory when he succeeded in having independent directors Roderick Sutton and Mel Ashton appointed to the Kentel board.

On Friday they confirmed in a letter to involved parties that Hajje, the lawyer on speed-dial for every groper, liar, grifter and major-league thug ever, has been terminated as Kentel’s legal representative and replaced with A&O Shearman (formerly known as Allen & Overy until their tie up with US firm Shearman last year).

That’s not such good news for Scott, who’ll need to rebrief a fresh counsel because Hajje, presumably, is conflicted out of the game. In the meantime, Scott’s dealing with much bigger fish. His relationship has reportedly soured with Ibrahim, police having stepped in to take out an apprehended violence order on his behalf against the underworld identity and his big brother Hassan, a former leader of the Nomads.

A TV hit, two private school boys and an old gangster? All it needs is some fast cars and rhyming slang, and maybe Guy Ritchie will pick up the phone? YB

Conflict of interest

Grace Tame stepped down as CEO of her eponymous foundation last year, a sensible move, to be fair; the place was turning into a financial sinkhole under her leadership with all the faffing and futzing going about.

Grace Tame. Picture: Chris Kidd

Financial accounts lodged on Friday with the charities regulator show Tame’s donations took a dive during FY24, dropping from $199,168 to a modest intake of $32,030 in the 12 months to June 30. Seed funding of $185,420 kept the place from comprehensively sinking, the year ending with losses of $121,000.

How did the foundation spend its money? For the second year running most of its funds were outlaid on legal fees for abuse survivors, a noble cause but one that’s unrelated to the charity’s mission of legislative reform. There is, of course, little oversight of this spending or how survivors were assessed. No one knows how cases were selected. Did survivors learn of this funding through word of mouth? Was it advertised?

Untidier, still, is how $100,132, representing the largest slice of the foundation’s expenditure, was given to Marque Lawyers, led by managing partner Michael Bradley, a director of the Grace Tame Foundation and signatory to its financial accounts. And if that’s not a perceived conflict of interest, we’ll eat our hats. YB

Hunt for missing millions

Fraud or incompetence? That’s the question for RSM’s Jerome Mohen and Greg Dudley as they pick through the ashes of WA’s Pastoralists and Graziers Association in the hunt for a missing $2m term deposit, and the source of a tax bill that caught the PGA’s board by surprise.

Grim times for the powerful WA farmers lobbying group, led by long-term president Tony Seabrook, which called in RSM as administrators on Thursday after its board belatedly discovered they couldn’t pay the bills, and had somehow lost track of the term deposit that’s supposedly been underpinning the group’s finances for more than a decade.

Margin Call hears that even that decision was debated at Thursday’s PGA board meeting, with at least one senior director contesting the obvious need to admit insolvency.

But was the board deceived? Yes, they were.

WA’s Pastoralists and Graziers Association president Tony Seabrook. Picture: Colin Murty

As far as they knew, the PGA was posting a solid surplus, and a $2m term deposit was delivering a healthy 5 per cent return.

Management accounts circulated to the PGA’s board late last year show a surplus of more than $200,000 for the year ending September 30, on income of about $880,000.

That includes $99,000 in interest from the PGA’s term deposit – that’s the one they can no longer find.

And no sign of any major debts to the Australian Taxation Office, which triggered the PGA’s crisis – and which the board also says they knew nothing about.

Good news, though, the staff Christmas party only cost $2200, and the office bill for tea and coffee came to less than $500 for the year.

But the kicker is the lack of any accounting bill to oversee the accounts for the year – which came to only $3100 the previous year.

The PGA operates under WA’s archaic associations laws, which don’t require a proper audit until you reach $3m in revenue. They do, however, require a review by an actual accountant, and a statement by the board that they think they’re correct.

Sadly for PGA members, all the accountant is required to do is “ advise whether anything has come to their attention to suggest that the report does not comply with the requirements of the Act”.

But not to actually check their accuracy, it appears. Or check to see where somebody hasn’t buggered off with a $2m term deposit. Margin Call has no idea who charged $3100 to check on the PGA’s financial accounts in 2023, but we hope they spent the money on something nice.

So what happened? There are three basic theories – the most favoured is that the PGA has been running deficits for years, and staff dipped into the reserves to cover the losses, until they were gone. The second is that the term deposit was used to pay off the ATO debt. Actual theft seems well down on the likely list.

PGA members such as Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest, Paul Holmes a Court and Kerry Stokes won’t miss the membership fees, even if the PGA does go bust.

But the rest of the PGA’s membership are entitled to ask some pointed questions about how long-serving board members never twigged to the problems. NE