At the end of last year, Mackay Goodwin (MackGood) director Gavin King was at the end of his tether.
For six months bankruptcy trustee Paul Leroy, who’d joined MackGood as an employee in June 2023, had been refusing requests from King and his staff for online access to the bank accounts of several bankrupt estates to which Leroy was sole trustee appointed.
Two accounts were for the Estates of ex-Health Services Union secretary Katherine Jackson and another was for the Estate of Sydney woman Susan Mary O’Rourke. Both women have since been discharged from bankruptcy.
King’s staff needed access to the accounts at the NAB so they could calculate Leroy’s Annual Estate Returns (AERs), lodge them with AFSA and make the necessary payments. But Leroy continued to stall and finally King had had enough.
According to an affidavit filed in proceedings commenced against Leroy by a Jackson Estate creditor, King instructed MackGood staff “to issue correspondence to the NAB requesting the Estates’ bank statements directly”.
“On 16 January 2024, NAB provided the Estates’ bank statements,” King said in his affidavit.
“As a result of obtaining the Estates’ bank statements, it became apparent to me that all of
the funds had been withdrawn from the bank account held for the benefit of the Second
(Jackson) Estate and the account closed.”
Attached in support of King’s affidavit was a copy of a letter on MackGood letterhead dated January 8, 2024 which had been emailed to [email protected].
As can been from the letter reproduced below, no recipient who wasn’t otherwise informed would think it was written by anyone other than Leroy.
The letter opens with the correspondent identifying themselves as Paul Leroy, it requests that NAB send the bank statements to a Mackay Goodwin staffer and is signed by Paul Leroy with what appears to be Leroy’s signature, presumably attached electronically.
But nobody at NAB would they have known based on the letter alone that Leroy had been refusing to provide access or that he’d had no communication with MackGood for several weeks before the letter was drafted and sent.
So does a firm in the predicament MackGood found itself in possess proper authority, delegated or otherwise to enable it to request Estate bank statements on behalf of a sole signatory?
And if the letter had disclosed that it was MackGood seeking the statements “directly” would NAB have complied?
We doubt firm principal Domenic Calabretta will email iNO a copy of Leroy’s employment contract, wherein the answers to such questions may reside. King meanwhile had not responded to enquiries as at time of writing.
Certainly in the form it was drafted the letter allows NAB to rely upon it as an authorised communication and the reality is that only by obtaining access was MackGood able to discover what had happened and report the matter to AFSA and the police.
After discovering that more than $1.9 million was unaccounted for in respect of the Jackson No.2 Estate account and that there were multiple unexplained transactions on the O’Rourke Estate account MackGood demanded an explanation from Leroy on January 16, 2024.
When none was forthcoming Leroy’s employment was terminated on January 19. On the same day the firm reported the matter to AFSA and lodged a Fraud Report with NSW Police.
By this time iNO understands Leroy was long gone. Where he went and what he’s been doing is a story for another day.
Further reading:
Leroy: how the deceit was discovered
Missing monies’ Labor links makes waves for AFSA
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