More farce and fiasco in epic Irelands Angus saga

The Irelands Angus dispersal sale added to the strange twists and turns of the saga, as this analysis reveals.

Corey Ireland with bulls at the Wagga Wagga property. Last week’s sale sought to recoup money for creditors, including Westpac, which is owed $3.5 million.

LAST week’s Irelands Angus dispersal sale was another bizarre episode in a sorry saga that has gripped the cattle world.

Westpac Banking Corporation had receivers Morgan Kelly and Will Colwell, of KPMG, appointed last December to sell the cattle bred by Corey and Prue Ireland on their Ivydell property at Kyeamba, south of Wagga Wagga in NSW.

The bank is owed $3.5 million for money it lent the Irelands to buy 1654 stud and commercial cattle and now holds a mortgage over Ivydell as collateral.

Dozens of financial institutions, cattle breeders, companies and even associates of the Irelands were owed more than $9 million when the Irelands Angus collapsed last year.

Mr Ireland is now facing 13 fraud charges laid by NSW Police for allegedly selling cattle that either did not exist, were deceased or had been on-sold without their owners’ knowledge. He has not yet entered a plea on the charges.

The receivers have been trying to sell the Ireland cattle for almost a year, but have struck hurdles with a number of parties other than Westpac claiming ownership of the animals.

In the meantime, they employed Mr Ireland to look after the cattle, a move many observers regarded as strange.

Making it more farcical, Mr Ireland took Westpac to court claiming it was not paying him enough.

Last week’s sale was the fourth held under instruction of the receivers.

One of the auctioneers was a creditor of the Irelands’ former family trust company, CD & PJ Ireland Pty Ltd, for an undisclosed amount.

More bizarrely, at the end of the sale on Friday, Mr Ireland held court, taking the microphone to thank people for supporting Irelands Angus over many years.

While the sale was arguably a good result to realise $1.75 million for 342 cows and bulls on offer, coupled with more than $400,000 from two recent bull sales and a private treaty sale in April, the $2.15 million generated will not go far between the claimants.

And it is still well short of the more than $7 million of livestock that was supposed to be held by the Irelands.

Liquidators’ reports show that, aside from Westpac, the Four 0 Eight Angus stud established by late cricketer Phil Hughes had a claim on 55 stud Angus cattle and progeny worth $2.8 million.

On top of that, Victorian cattle breeder Peter August, of Holstons Pastoral Company in East Gippsland, owned hundreds of cattle at Ivydell valued at $1.47 million.

There are a number of smaller creditors of CD & PJ Ireland which were collectively owed hundreds of thousands of dollars for more than 100 cattle.

Last week’s sale included eight Jondaryan cows and 21 progeny of Jondaryan cows, which collectively sold for $136,500.

Wagga Wagga cattle investor Richard Allsopp took Mr Ireland to the Federal Circuit Court in 2018 claiming he bought the entire Jondaryan herd of 370 cattle in 2015 for $605,000, but discovered three years later some were on-sold without his knowledge or him being paid and that 70 were dead.

Mr Allsopp said the 29 Jondaryan cattle and progeny sold last week belonged to him.

Mr Ireland’s lawyer did not respond to questions by The Weekly Times.

At the end of the auction last Friday, Mr Ireland referred to the sale as his “last hurrah”.

But will it be?

On August 24, he registered the business name Ireland’s Angus.