Legal

AUSTRALIA’S BIGGEST LOSER: The Left’s favourite liquidator Dean McVeigh struck off over conflicts of interest, failure to properly perform duties

Many moons ago, in 2003 when VEXNEWS had not been yet imagined, young socialists and their pipe-smoking cardigan wearing baby boomer friends in the University of Melbourne administration conspired to appoint a liquidator to its student union which had been previously run by fine, upstanding Labor and Liberal aligned moderates.

It was a curious liquidation, urged on by hysterical and shrill coverage in The Age newspaper in particular, principally because the union was very well managed and at the time of the liquidation had a large multi-million dollar surplus of assets over liabilities.

But the union was an oasis of mainstream politics in a Saharan desert of mean-spirited leftism. And it drove the ultra-left and allied figures in the University administration and a few in the student union’s bureaucracy completely crazy. They wanted the moderates dead, at any price.

STUMBLING INTO HELL
I was unwise enough to occasionally attempt to assist some of these younger moderates, recognising that the surviving the scorched desert with one’s sanity intact was not easy and that occasionally helping was a patriotic cause. It was unwise to assist them of course because it made me a target as well and missing that point was a little naive and stupid.

After a huge political fight, and repeated election victories by the moderates concerned, with many serious and false claims made by socialist aligned political operatives or Age journalists, University bureaucrats appointed a suburban accountant Dean Royston McVeigh as the liquidator of the union. A supposedly independent and court-appointed chap who in theory would sort out any issues and generally do-good. The theory was very different from the reality McVeigh unleashed.

WHAT McVEIGH DID
The predecessor publication of VEXNEWS – the Other Cheek – devoted thousands and thousands of words to just how shonky and corrupt Dean McVeigh was. Indeed the OC was founded to counter some of McVeigh’s lies and the spin put on them by the AgeBC.

Central to our case was that McVeigh – and his network of professional advisers -made many millions of dollars from a liquidation that was not necessary in the first place and never needed to be dragged on as they did.

Justifying all of this was McVeigh’s frequently repeated and false claim that the moderates involved in running the union and their offsiders had improperly and personally profited from doing so. It was absolute nonsense from the beginning.

MY CAMEO APPEARANCE
McVeigh implied and the Age baldly declared I had made a fortune from the joint. It was a complete crock. So much so that despite a huge fanfare and fuss, I was required to actually attend one whole day of the dodgy liquidator’s court examination. Other witnesses amassed dozens of days. My involvement had been peripheral and no responsible person could say otherwise.

Egged on perhaps by The Age, McVeigh repeatedly claimed he could recover many millions of dollars from wrongdoers. The amount varied. Sometimes it was two million, sometimes three, in a writ he allowed to be serve, nearly eight million was claimed.

It all seemed rather serious business to observers. An apparently responsible, honest person making serious claims. Where there’s smoke there’s fire. But as the smoke cleared, there wasn’t any fire of corruption just a smouldering ruin where the well-managed moderate-controlled student union used to be.

THE REAL DEAN McVEIGH REVEALED
And yet the truth was that the university bureaucrats who appointed McVeigh lived to regret it. Several of its high-ranking officials have told us so. The more they got to know of him and his antics the more worried they became. It was an expensive, ugly, reputation-muddying and brutal way of getting a restructuring of the student union to give them more power over it.

McVeigh recovered not one cent from the person he insisted was central to the whole matter. Me.

He sued many others and obtained not a single judgment against any of them. Not one.

He ended up spending around $8 million and when the University said “no more”, documents we obtained revealed that he’d threatened them with “adverse publicity” from his mates at The Age newspaper.

By then they realised who’d they’d got into bed with: Dean McVeigh is/was a low-rent crook whose excesses dwarfed even the twisted imaginings of leftist university academics and Age journalists who’d conjured up an idea that a moderate controlled student union was the focus of evil in the modern world.

GET OVER YOURSELF
After a while of raging against this machine, the OC and VEXNEWS developed into a publication that explored issues much wider than the personal preoccupations of its publisher, so we let go of McVeigh.

Let go after watching his much advertised, multi-million dollar lawsuits crumble. He withdrew his claims of conspiracy and all sorts against every single defendant without obtaining a judgment against any of them despite spending many millions of dollars on legals.

Let go after watching the heroic Benjamin Cass take on and defeat McVeigh’s high-priced legal team who were trying to jail him for contempt of court for daring to describe McVeigh’s corrupt behaviour on a website aptly called ‘Make McVeigh Pay.’

Let go after watching the Magistrates Court strike out McVeigh’s attempt to obtain an intervention order to silence our criticism of his misconduct.

His affront was sufficient that it took all our discipline to refrain from defecating upon his front door-step in Sandringham every Sunday morning or leaving the remains of a hot curry in the glovebox of his cheap-ass Rolls Royce. But in finding that discipline we also learned along the way from a mostly wise friend of ours from Toorak that the best revenge is living well. And that we love writing and spreading the good news of VEXNEWS nearly as much as we love the Essendon Football Club.

WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND
For McVeigh, what goes around comes around. After that long background, we finally get to the lead.

We can report that this same Dean McVeigh has been banned by corporate regulators from continuing as a company liquidator and administrator after serious findings of irregularities and misconduct relating to his mismanagement of many companies.

It’s a fitting end to a sordid career. A career rooted in rorts, conflicts of interest and contempt for the rules.

We have asked a contributor to summarise the findings of the Companies and Liquidators Disciplinary Board but ironically it’s the Fairfax press who didn’t miss him this morning, kudos to their Mark Hawthorne for ensuring the ban got a prominent run:

Administrator liquidated for 18 months

AN INVESTIGATION by the corporate plod has resulted in high-profile accountant Dean McVeigh of Foremans Business Advisors being banned from acting as a voluntary administrator or liquidator for 18 months.

The Companies Auditors and Liquidators Disciplinary Boardfound that McVeigh ”failed to carry out or perform adequately and properly the duties of a liquidator” during the administration of 10 companies between 2001 and 2007.

The board adjudicates on registered auditors and liquidators who are reported by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission or the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.

In its 227-page report, CALDB found McVeigh failed to disclose to creditors his relationships with companies, company directors and professional advisers while involved in liquidations.

The board found that McVeigh should not have accepted several liquidations because of such conflicts.

He ”failed adequately and properly to investigate the business, property, affairs and financial circumstances” of several companies after being appointed liquidator.

Of the 52 breaches alleged by ASIC, the CALDB panel found 48 were established ”to our satisfaction”.

The name Dean Royston McVeigh has popped up several times over the years.

In 2005, he was liquidator of the Melbourne University Student Union Inc and issued a writ against former MUSU presidents Andrew Landeryou and Ben Cass.

McVeigh claimed a ”conspiracy in relation to the alleged diversion of profit from the union bar and food outlets to Landeryou and Cass” through various firms. [VEXNEWS: A claim McVeigh withdrew against every defendant]

McVeigh also took action against Cass for contempt of court over comments he published about the MUSU liquidation in a blog.

Justice Elizabeth Hollingworth found the blog comments had a ‘’strong degree of factual accuracy”. It was a remarkable court victory for Cass, a part-time student who represented himself in the proceedings.

”At the heart of [Cass'] concerns is his assertion that the liquidator started with about $6 million in assets and $4 million in liabilities, but instead of simply paying out creditors has spent millions of dollars on professional fees pursuing this litigation against impoverished or impecunious defendants,” Justice Hollingworth said.

In 2008, McVeigh’s name appeared in the papers after Carlton’s Rathdowne Tavern went bust. Creditors from Laanecoorie Vineyard noted that the owners, Nicholas and Jody Harvey, were trading in the same business, using the same name, in the same building, and were ”driving around in a very fancy black Mercedes”.

McVeigh was the liquidator of the business.

According to yesterday’s CALDB decision, several of the private companies that McVeigh liquidated faced bills from the Tax Office. One, called IDKF, faced legal action from the NSW Minister for Commerce over a claimed $2.8 million debt.

ASIC raised questions about fund transfers out of the companies before they were wound up.

The panel, in its explanation of its decision, found that several of McVeigh’s actions were ”contrary to the applicable professional standards and to law”.

In addition to his 18-month ban, McVeigh was ordered to complete additional ”continuing professional development”. When his suspension has ended, he will be subject to peer reviews of his next five voluntary administrations and next five creditors voluntary liquidations.

McVeigh, who has denied any wrongdoing, runs a business called McVeigh Corporate Advisory.

Industry sources tell VEXNEWS they think it’s unlikely McVeigh will be able to return to practice as a liquidator and that early retirement is probably his best option.

And the final word goes to the merry band of freedom fighters who were engulfed for a time by the McVeigh inferno. They emerged not always unscathed but are – it seems – all doing well now, engaged in the best revenge of living well. They learned who their friends are. They learned what really matters: faith, family, friends and freedom.

In my only real conversation with Dean McVeigh – quoting Paul Keating – I told him I would do him slowly for all the lies he’d uttered and fraud he’d perpetrated. And now he is done.

To read the media release from the Companies Auditors and Liquidators Disciplinary Board on McVeigh’s ban, click here and its 250 page report that details his crimes click here.

Game on.

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