Latest news with #FairEntitlementsGuarantee
Sky News AU
18-07-2025
- Business
- Sky News AU
Sydney builder banned by corporate watchdog after being involved in collapse of three construction companies resulting in $93m debt
A Sydney builder owing $93m in debt has been banned for five years by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). ASIC announced on Friday construction director Anthony Azizi, based in NSW, would be disqualified from managing corporations until July 14, 2030. The decision comes after a trio of construction company collapses, which Mr Azizi was involved in. He worked as the director of Trinity Constructions and Regal Consulting Services and as a shadow director of Trinco between January 2001 and September 2021. All three companies have since collapsed, taking with them a total of $93,708,563 racked up in debt to more than 300 unsecured creditors. This included statutory debts owed to Australian Taxation Office, NSW Office of State Revenue, Workers Compensation Nominal Insurer, Department of Employment and Workplace Relations in relation to the Fair Entitlements Guarantee, and the NSW Self Insurance Corporation. Several small businesses are also owed money. ASIC's decision said it found Mr Azizi to have "acted improperly and failed to meet his obligations as director" through a number of ways. These included failure "to exercise due care and diligence to ensure that the companies met their statutory requirements," how he "failed to take reasonable steps to ensure the companies kept written financial records" and that he "improperly used his position to cause detriment to the companies". ASIC also said Mr Azizi had failed to ensure companies did not trade while insolvent. It also found he failed to lodge a report on company activities and property with the liquidator of Regal within 10 days of finishing up and failed to provide "reasonable assistance" to the liquidator of Regal as he did not deliver all the books "as soon as practicable after winding up". Supplementary reports from the liquidator of Trinity, Graeme Beattie of Worrells, and the liquidator of Trinco, Henry McKenna of Vincents, assisted ASIC in its decision to disqualify Mr Azizi. Mr Azizi has the right to seek a review of ASIC's decision by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
AU Financial Review
15-07-2025
- Business
- AU Financial Review
Directors with multiple strikes on unpaid wages ‘should be banned'
Directors whose companies repeatedly access the unpaid wages safety net should be automatically disqualified, the Albanese government has been urged, in consultations on tightening access to the scheme. The Law Council and the Australian Council of Trade Unions are among those who urged harsher penalties for directors for alleged misuse of the Fair Entitlements Guarantee due to concerns it is being used to shift costs from failing businesses onto taxpayers.
AU Financial Review
14-07-2025
- Business
- AU Financial Review
Rag trade ruling leaves taxpayers on the hook for unpaid wages
Two textile executives have been found not to have intended to dud workers in a business sale that left $3.5 million of unpaid wages to be picked up by the taxpayer-funded safety net, in a first-of-its-kind prosecution. The failure of the prosecution case ramps up pressure on the Albanese government to prevent misuse of the Fair Entitlements Guarantee over concerns it can be used to shift costs from failing businesses onto taxpayers.
ABC News
08-07-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Aged care, disability and veterans care provider Annecto in voluntary administration
Aged care, disability and veterans care service provider Annecto Incorporated has entered voluntary administration, putting entitlement payouts for hundreds of staff in doubt. Last month Annecto, which has more than 1,000 employees and 4,400 clients across four states, announced it would stop its community services by the end of July. On Monday, the Annecto board put the organisation into voluntary administration, saying the organisation was either insolvent, or was likely to become insolvent in future, according to administrators McGrathNicol. In a letter to staff, the administrators said all staff would be made redundant, and if there were insufficient funds to pay all wages, entitlements or redundancy packages, they would be paid on a pro rata basis. If the organisation went into liquidation, McGrathNicol said employees could apply for payouts under the federal government's Fair Entitlements Guarantee Act. An Annecto carer based in Melbourne, who asked to remain anonymous out of concern for future job opportunities, said no precise stop work date had been given to staff, but work hours were dropping off as clients transitioned to new providers. They said as a result, Annecto support workers were under financial pressure and stressed about their futures. Most of Annecto's support workers look after all three categories of customers — aged care, NDIS and veterans affairs. The Melbourne-based Annecto employee said important relationships between support workers and clients were ending abruptly with workers offered jobs by other providers only able to continue contact with some of their clients. "The veterans' clients have already [been transitioned to other providers] — they're gone," the worker said. The carer said they were lamenting the prospect of having to choose which client base to try and follow and which to farewell. "You build a rapport, you build a routine, you know where you're going every day," they said. "It's very jarring for people to break that routine and go into a bunch of different houses and have to restart." Peter Smith is a Melbourne-based Annecto client who has a team of more than five support workers from the company. He said he had specific needs due to a long-term brain injury and post-polio syndrome and fears he will lose contact with support workers who understand his needs when he changes to a new provider. "I feel devastated," Mr Smith said. "I have multiple disabilities and my support team … I've trained them up to be aware of my needs. In an interview before the voluntary administration announcement, Annecto Incorporated interim chief executive Tyrone McCuskey said it was up to the service providers taking on Annecto clients to keep those clients connected to their former support workers. "The opportunities for staff to move with any of the clients they look after is really up to the new provider to assist with that transition," Mr McCuskey said. "The clients all have choice and control and they have a choice in provider and choice in the individuals who support them." He said Peter, for example, could speak to his new provider about continuity of care and keeping specific people in his support network. "That's definitely possible, because there's so much choice and control that the clients have," he said. "There's a lot of flexibility about how they can require their services to be met going forward in this day and age."
Sky News AU
04-07-2025
- Business
- Sky News AU
Taxpayers forced to outlay over $20 million after embattled NDIS operator fails to pay wages of 1200 workers
Taxpayers could be forced to fork out up to $20 million after dodgy NDIS provider Cocoon SDA neglected to pay the wages and superannuation benefits of hundreds of its workers. NDIS firm SDA Cocoon, headed up by ex-bankrupt investment spruiker Zaffar Khan was placed into the hands of liquidators David Mansfield and Philip Robinson from Deloitte in May after the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission slapped its parent company Horizon Solsolutions Australia with a 30-day ban. Horizon was accused of wrongly charging more than $77,000 for services to three dead people and conceded it needed to provide tens of thousands of dollars in repayments that should not have been made. Cocoon also allegedly owes 1200 former employees up to $30,000 each in unpaid wages. The company has been accused of neglecting to provide its workers with wages for up to four months before the firm shut its doors. A collective of former Cocoon employees have now lodged an application to the Fair Entitlements Guarantee which provides workers with up to 13 weeks compensation for unpaid wages and eligible annual leave and redundancy pay. So far 225 former Cocoon workers have submitted a back pay claim to the government program, with the Herald Sun reporting that the bill could fetch as high as $20 million if all affected workers made a submission. The NDIS provider, which has been subject to a National Disability Insurance Agency manual audit of all of its payment claims had over 400 clients and was touted as one of the fastest growing businesses in the country. Former Cocoon employee Stephen Cooper who has made a submission to the FEG said the lack of pay had left him in a desperate position. 'They stopped paying me the month after I had moved into my home and started paying my mortgage,' Mr Cooper told The Herald Sun. 'I'm two months behind on my loan, I have a personal loan and a car loan.' Mr Stephens said he was in such strife that he was now borrowing money from friends to afford petrol to travel to and from work. A former Cocoon manager who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that they were owed a whopping $30,000 in salary remunerations in addition to superannuation payments and that there was no concrete guarantee they would get their hard earned money back. 'I'm furious at not being paid, given the director has taken himself to Pakistan and the corporate strategist (Zaffar Khan) is swanning around like nothing has happened,' the source told The Herald Sun. The source also blasted the liquidators, and said they had made no contact since they were installed and did not have the details of the affected staff. A third worker also despaired that despite Cocoon sending her pay slips, there was no money being deposited into her account and said she was therefore unable to apply for Centrelink payments. Tanya-Lee Quinn, a former senior Cocoon SDA executive who blew the whistle on the company's conduct, stated the firm's bosses should be held responsible for dudding their employees. 'There's no incentive to do the right thing,' she said. The Department of Employment and Workplace relations confirmed that 'As of 2 July 2025, 225 former employees of Horizon Solsolutions Australia Pty Ltd, formerly trading as Cocoon SDA Care have submitted a claim under the Fair Entitlements Guarantee (FEG)."
