George Alex’s boast: I’m untouchable because CFMEU ‘need money’

Organised crime boss George Alex boasted the CFMEU deemed his firms “untouchable” on building sites because union officials needed their “kickers”, according to police surveillance.

The covert police recordings, released by the NSW Supreme Court, offer a further glimpse into the sweeping building industry empire Alex built along Australia’s east coast in the decade after a 2015 royal commission outed him as a criminal figure who had bribed union officials to win CFMEU favours.

George Alex was this month convicted of tax fraud and money laundering.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

The recordings from 2019 and 2020 also capture Alex’s criminal lieutenant complaining that a union agreement he secured for a tax-dodging firm did not come cheap.

Alex was convicted earlier this month of tax fraud and money laundering, rather than corrupting union officials or building company bosses. But the release by the court of phone-tap and listening-device recordings appears to back up the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions’ case that Alex’s criminal operation was able to flourish due to his skill at “leveraging contacts in the trade unions” and big building firms.

Alex’s labour hire firms, which supplied workers to big construction projects, were used by Alex to launder dirty money, including suspected drug dollars, and rort the Tax Office of millions of dollars.

CFMEU administrator Mark Irving, KC, who was appointed to take over the union after this masthead’s Building Bad stories revealed infiltration of crime and corruption, has indicated in public statements that he intends to pick up where the AFP investigation into Alex left off: scrutinising the way Alex and other labour hire bosses may have corrupted the union and building companies.

But while Irving has compulsory powers for interviews and to produce documents, he has no ability to tap phones, use listening devices or access police information.

The police recordings of Alex capture him at his luxury beachside apartment at Surfers Paradise, on the Gold Coast, telling disgraced Kiwi businessman and co-conspirator Mark Bryers that the CFMEU won’t touch his labour hire firms in an industrial scrap with Multiplex.

“The CFMEU always do that, but not with me. You do that for everybody [else] but you don’t do it for my blokes – my blokes are untouchable,” Alex says.

“They can’t do it with our guys, can’t. F--- ’em, they – they need their kicker, they need money, the union, they … (indistinct) … they – they come to us so they need us to make money.”

Alex was previously found by a 2015 royal commission to have given regular kickbacks to senior union officials in return for their support of his firms, including those who not only ripped off the ATO, but also union members.

In the recording, Alex can also be heard describing how he would use a manager of his Queensland firm Global HR, Jamie McHugh, a former Builders Labourers Federation organiser, to settle any union issues.

Jamie is the son of Alex’s tax fraud co-conspirator, Kevin McHugh, but was not charged with any wrongdoing, and this masthead does not suggest he engaged in wrongdoing.

“I would never let that happen, that – that’ll never happen,” Alex tells Bryers regarding a blue with the union. “I go ‘what are you doing Jamie, you got – you ne – need help bro, just gotta ask’ … (indistinct) … we’re milking the f--- out of it ’cause we pay the extra f---in’ consultant – your um uh sponsorship … your victim fund.”

Mark Bryers was a key architect in the George Alex tax fraud.Credit: Wolter Peeters

Alex says he advised Jamie to let the CFMEU put pressure on the builder but not him: “You gotta get the union to go in and go ‘listen we’re gonna f--- ya over here but make sure all the boys be there but won’t touch ya’.”

In separate wiretaps, Bryers – who was also convicted for his role in Alex’s tax fraud scheme – is recorded talking to another accused conspirator in early 2020 about Sydney firm Eastside Formwork, which he claimed owed him “a tonne of money”, including for getting it a CFMEU enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA).

The accused co-conspirator tells Bryers “and again you know the EBA and stuff didn’t come for free”, to which Bryers replies: “I know that too, mate – I was at the forefront of having to deal with that shit.”

Bryers was enlisted to assist Eastside Formwork from 2018 after the ATO pursued its boss Dane Stojic’s previous company, Rediform, for significant tax debts.

Bryers used Inestimable Holdings – “a company I set up to take the fall” – to pay Eastside workers’ wages but not their taxes, which totalled $3 million in less than a year.

But Bryers also claimed he handled Stojic’s union issues: “I had to go in and save his [Stojic’s] arse with the unions and while he was away overseas, and he was bloody all over the place psychologically, to pay up … all of his entitlements for nine months to save his company,” he is recorded saying.

Despite the pay issues, Bryers says then-CFMEU NSW assistant secretary Rob Kera – whom Stojic had once provided with a character reference – offered Eastside a new CFMEU EBA.

Four months later, in July 2020, Eastside went into receivership owing $6 million in PAYG taxes and about $1 million in wages and entitlements to 260 workers.

The CFMEU successfully pressured builders, including Hutchinson and Parkview, to pay Eastside’s unpaid wages, even as it granted another agreement to a new Eastside company that same month. That firm would collapse six months later owing the ATO $1.6 million.

Westburn Advisory liquidator Shumit Banerjee is currently pursuing Stojic for almost $9 million in a lawsuit that alleges he was part of a scheme to avoid PAYG tax over a decade. Stojic has denied any wrongdoing.

Eastside and Stojic were not part of the George Alex tax fraud scheme. However, Bryers is recorded on wiretaps saying he wanted Eastside to be part of the broader Alex syndicate and to use the franchise structure that Bryers developed on Eastside to “legitimately” avoid paying taxes.

Stojic said through his lawyers that he had “no knowledge of any dealings that Mr Bryers had with the union involving any purported payment for an EBA”.

“Mr Stojic also denies any suggested, or implied, involvement in Mr Bryers’ dealings with George Alex, or any scheme that may have been developed by Mr Bryers for the avoidance of the payment of tax,” his lawyer said.

Bryers’ dealings on Eastside appeared to help him net a rare labour hire agreement from the CFMEU NSW, in the name of Andrew Hegedus – a straw director whom Bryers had recruited and whom he used for Alex’s companies.

Hegedus, who wasn’t charged and gave evidence for the prosecution in the Alex trial, had two companies, Bryers claims in a wiretap recorded in May 2020 – “one of which has got a labour hire for NSW [laughs] … from CFMEU … done as a favour for Eastside”.

The CFMEU signed a greenfields agreement for Hegedus’ Formwork Consolidated Labour in March 2020. The firm was deregistered after Australian Federal Police arrested Alex, Bryers and others over the tax fraud in July that year.

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