Unified Security finished with NSW hotel quarantine

Unified Security has been booted from the NSW hotel quarantine scheme amid a court tussle over the future of its operating ­licence.

Unified Security Group chief executive Matthew Conway. Picture: David Ross

Unified Security has been booted from the NSW hotel quarantine scheme amid a court tussle over the future of its operating ­licence.

In an interim hearing in the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal, the business revealed it was told last Friday would be its final day working in NSW hotel quarantine.

The move by the NSW government resulted in 530 guards being stood down and comes after a shock move last week by NSW Police to gain access to the names of Unified Security’s guards.

Unified Security has at times supplied as many as one third of all guards to the NSW hotel quarantine scheme. Unified Security told the tribunal it had less than three weeks to survive if it lost its master licence.

That was despite more than a year of work in the NSW hotel quarantine scheme, months in the Victorian scheme, and a long list of high-profile clients.

Unified Security claimed it was staggering under the weight of massive loans and dividends to its parent entity.

NCAT heard the matter on Monday morning after lawyers for the security business had secured a last-minute delay to the cancellation of the licence last month. No decision was made on the status of the company’s licence on Monday, with a three-day hearing set down for late July to decide whether Unified Security would continue to hold its licence.

The NCAT heard almost $15m in loans had been made out of Unified Security Group over the past year to the parent entity, Unified Security Group Holdings. The holding company was revealed by The Australian to be linked to David Millward and Luigi Trunzo through a layer of corporate holding structures.

The tribunal heard no attempt had been made to repay the loans and senior figures in the business were unaware of the terms of the loans or when they had been made. It also heard at least $5m in dividends had been paid out of Unified Security Group to the corporate company linked to Mr Millward and Mr Trunzo in the last financial year.