Nine Entertainment puts The Block’s auctions under the hammer

Nine Entertainment will ‘abide by all regulations’ on the new season of The Block to avoid a repeat of last year’s auction fiasco.

Scott Cam will again host The Block on Channel 9.

Media giant Nine Entertainment says it will “abide by all regulations” on this season’s series of The Block to ensure there is no repeat of last year’s embarrassing fiasco, which saw a winning bidder of a $4.256m property default on the purchase just days after the program’s finale.

Emese Fayk was labelled an “international conwoman” when she failed to deposit money in Nine’s account after outbidding others at the November auction.

The 29-year-old denied any wrongdoing, and maintains she was “unfairly” treated by the network when she tried to finalise the settlement of the house.

The sale did not proceed, and when it was quietly put back on the market earlier this year, it sold for $4m — more than a quarter of a million dollars less than the price it attracted at the televised auction.

At the time of the botched settlement, Nine said it had thoroughly vetted each potential buyer before allowing them to bid for the properties on offer.

But the scandal took the sheen off the otherwise successful series.

Ahead of the launch of the 2021 series on Sunday, a Nine spokeswoman said: “We are a long way from auction — and who knows what regulations we will need to put in place to ensure it goes ahead safely and abide by all regulations at the time.

“The regulations around auctions are not solely determined by us, they are state-based and cover many aspects of behaviour. They are designed by the authorities to protect all parties in the process and we rigorously abide by all ­regulations.”

“In terms of a fair process (last year), we had months of interactions with the proposed buyer and gave her every opportunity to complete the sale. As above there are regulations we followed and no media coverage occurred until all avenues were explored and failed.”

Ms Fayk, who is believed to have relocated to Europe, told The Australian on Sunday she was treated “unfairly” by the ­network.

“I would have been treated fairly if they reached out to me as soon as anyone made any allegations, or (if) they engaged in any sort of communication about this when it got back to me and I offered some background information,” she said.

Ms Fayk also accused Nine of seeking to discredit her by running a negative story about her on the network’s A Current Affair program in the week before settlement day.