Your discount deal is in the post; Feeling lucky – just send your passport and bank account

RM Williams staffer Chloe Fabian with Nicola Forrest. Picture: Phil Fabian

How does Australia Post stop its prized corporate clients from playing footsie with a competitor? It offers them a cheeky little discount.

Or in the case of RM Williams, a very cheeky discount.

A longstanding customer, the bootmaker belongs to billionaires Andrew and Nicola Forrest through their family office, Tattarang, the growth and flourishing of its investments having been entrusted to Forrest lieutenant John Hartman.

Purchased any of their footwear lately?

If yes, the wares were almost certainly dispatched using Startrack, owned by Australia Post, the mail service having led the wrapping and packing and shipping of RM Williams’ gear for decades.

Recently, however, the Paul Graham-led Australia Post found itself at very real risk of losing RM Williams. Desperate to keep them, its officials extended themselves in unusual ways to keep the Forrest family satisfied.

Not that we have a copy of any contractual arrangements (Tattarang, backing away from this story, told us nothing had been formally signed just yet) but it’s our impeccable understanding that RM Williams was offered a 50 per cent discount on Australia Post’s fuel surcharge as a sweetener to retain the account. Not forever, but for a good while.

Australia Post chief executive Paul Graham.

“RM Williams is a valued and longstanding customer of Australia Post, and all commercial arrangements are confidential,” an Australia Post spokeswoman told Margin Call.

The surcharge, for anyone wondering, is what Australia Post clients pay to cover the cost of using diesel and jet fuel to transport a Craftsman boot in yearling leather from Adelaide to a kid at a Bloomberg terminal in Martin Place.

A government-owned business eating its costs to keep two of the nation’s wealthiest people happy? Of course it worked.

Never mind that the deal completely stinks for the humble taxpayer who will inevitably pay for this capitulation.

Stranger still is that Forrest, of all people, would accept this bit of baksheesh (pending signatures and the drying of ink).

This is the same Forrest who keeps railing against successive federal governments to phase out generous diesel fuel rebates while simultaneously slurping down 630 million litres of his own supply at Fortescue (and claiming $300m in fuel tax credits along the way).

Knowing that Forrest has found yet another opportunity for taxpayers to subsidise his fossil fuel output isn’t even an outrage anymore – it’s damn-near impressive at this point.

Australia Post, on the other hand, can congratulate itself, too – not just for keeping a client on the books but for enabling this outright schmuckery.

Sign on dotted line

Trying to cleanse your investment portfolio of any flotsam left over from former market darling iSignThis? Just send your passport and bank account details to an unlisted company in Cyprus.

That’s what John Karantzis is asking from loyal shareholders of the stricken former fintech. His latest scheme is to promise a European listing (and possibly redemption) through his latest creation, ISX Financial, which was spun out of the ruins of iSignThis in 2021.

Once valued at more than $1.4bn by the market, the payments company was suspended from trade in 2019 leaving some 10,000 investors with stranded shareholdings.

John Karantzis wants investors to put their faith in him.

On Wednesday, ISX Financial offered a pathway back to the market through a listing on an unnamed European market.

Only one catch: shareholders have to create an account on ISX’s money transfer app, Flykk, by uploading their passport, banking and tax details, recent utilities bill … all of which sounds suspiciously like manna to even the lowliest identity thief.

The reason provided is that ISX needs to demonstrate that it has a diverse shareholding group to list on a stock exchange, and so it requires the identity documents to move its share registry from Australia to Cyprus.

“For shareholders to trade, we need to verify the identity of our shareholders and meet EU Central Securities Depositary (sic) Regulations, Taxation reporting and Listing rules,” said an ISX letter to investors. Surely not just a ruse to drive a large number of people to ISX’s new e-money solution?

 

Day in court

The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission rarely provides much in the way of useful output. Its participation in this story was no exception.

Margin Call’s fossicking through daily court lists uncovered the familiar name of Greg Schott, ACIC’s former operations manager who’s apparently taking the agency to the Fair Work Commission alleging unfair dismissal.

As reported a year ago, Schott was stood down with pay over a swag of allegations concerning his corporate travel and spending. Investigations were ordered and a second ACIC employee quit of their own volition during the process.

Quite a bold measure to take ACIC to the workplace tribunal. The case is scheduled for a directions hearing on Thursday and it’s one that could result in the airing of much dirty linen.

As for the ACIC itself, its response was predictable. “The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission has no comment,” a spokeswoman said. Not that we’d expect anything else.