Lendlease whistleblower Tony Watson is fighting the big property developer in court as the Tax Office investigation into the $1bn tax scam grinds on behind the scenes. Michael West reports.
When the top brass at Lendlease and their Big 4 tax avoidance advisers were plotting how to skin the Tax Office for $300m in a retirement village scam 10 years ago, they needed to get residents to switch from leases to loans. So they dangled $9000 payments in front of their elderly residents to entice them to swap contracts.
Swapping the loan contracts enabled Lendlease and its auditors from KPMG to “double dip” on a billion dollars worth of tax deductions in their retirement village business. Effectively, they forked out $50m to filch $400m from the public. The transaction adviser PwC and the only-ever auditor of Lendlease, KPMG, have planned and signed-off on a billion dollar fraud.
And so it is that Lendlease has not paid corporate income tax in Australia for the past decade.
The scam might have all gone swimmingly for the veteran tax swervers at Lendlease but for the objections of a tax lawyer at top tier law firm Greenwoods & Herbert Smith Freehills, Anthony Watson. Watson approached the Lendlease executive leadership to advise them their scheme was not legal and that their published accounts were actually wrong.
Rebuffed by these same executives who were plotting to dud the Tax Office, Watson went to the Lendlease board. Despite Watson’s explanation to the Lendlease...
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