The ATO’s claim at Albanese’s Point Piper fundraiser
The prime minister’s harbourside fundraiser was located at a Sydney mansion where the Commonwealth appears on the title.
There are several hard-to-believe things about Anthony Albanese’s harbourside fundraiser at Point Piper this week, revealed in this column.
That guest list for one. Filling the numbers were Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn, the bank’s former boss David Murray and ex-ASIC chairman James Shipton. The Powerball was the semi-reclusive Dan Andrews.
Anthony Albanese attended The Mandalay on Monday night, alongside some of the biggest names in banking. Louie Douvis
Another is, what the hell is the prime minister doing at a dinner organised by a 25-year-old? That is Felix Lee, the frontman for the family office that manages the fortune of his gambling addict father Phillip Dong Fang Lee and mother Xiaobei Shi.
Most 20-somethings are floating on doughnuts outside Prague this time of year. The premise of Felix’s dinner was a $1 million donation he’d commit to the Labor Party, according to a source familiar with the plans. That may have meant getting associates to donate, too. They said special photos were taken at the dinner.
A Labor spokesman said on Wednesday that it was “not correct” to say there was a $1 million promise from Lee. How much then? “All of Labor’s donations are disclosed in line with the Commonwealth Electoral Act”.
Well, here’s another difficult-to-believe thing. The $40 million mansion that was the backdrop (“The Mandalay” on Wolseley Road) is the subject of a security claim by the Australian Taxation Office.
Felix’s mother is the sole name on the title. But according to the last public document on the property, the Tax Office sits on the title of the Lee-Shi residence.
Felix Lee.
The ATO froze Lee and Shi’s web of companies and assets in 2021. The tax authorities went after the pair for almost $273 million in unpaid taxes, with a settlement reportedly agreed in 2022. At the start of 2023, the ATO appeared on the deed of security for The Mandalay, alongside two other companies connected to Felix’s mother.
That document was certified by a director in the ATO’s frontline compliance, strategic recovery and insolvency unit. There may have been changes since, but if so, they haven’t been added to the file. An ATO spokesman declined to comment, citing confidentiality laws.
So the prime minister attended a fundraiser dinner with the cream of the finance elite at the family home of a 20-something. Did he know the fundraiser was being held on a property the Commonwealth of Australia has security over?
The Welcome to Country must’ve been fun: We pay our respects to Felix, and the pasts of Phillip and Xiaobei. Not always was, but always will be (until it’s not) ATO land.
People we speak to say Felix is a straight shooter. The young buck is doing his best to put that past behind him. It’s just rather difficult. As part of the freeze order, the ATO locked father Phillip out of his gambling account with Sydney’s The Star casino.
He was one of the casino’s biggest whales, with an insatiable appetite for the baccarat tables. At the first inquiry helmed by Adam Bell in 2022, Phillip became the star witness. It heard how he put $2.2 billion through the casino between 2014 and 2017.
A ‘case study’ for compliance failures
So Bell’s report included him as a “case study” for compliance failures, but ends: “It was not put to Mr Lee in his evidence... that he engaged in money laundering or any other improper conduct. No finding of impropriety of any kind is made against Mr Lee.”
It’s worth picking through the rest. That included that “various staff members at that time had expressed concern that Mr Lee was using [Chinese debit cards] as an ATM facility”.
These were Chinese UnionPay debit cards. The casino was accused of breaking the law by allowing gamblers to swipe the cards in its hotel lobby and then making the funds available in its casino. The transactions were allegedly disguised as hotel expenses for “dummy rooms”. Phillip was the biggest user of the cards, which, under the terms of service, were reserved for foreign punters. He was a local resident, so he shouldn’t have been using them in the first place.
According to an internal casino spreadsheet, Phillip’s Chinese debit card swiped $39,960,000 into the casino over six months from 2015 to 2016. He took out $6,845,000 in so-called winnings cheques, and what Bell described as “a remarkable amount” of $31,935,000 in non-winnings cheques.
“The case study demonstrates that there were clear money laundering risks to which the Star failed to respond,” Bell wrote. “In particular, there is no evidence that indicates The Star was checking the source of Mr Lee’s funds.”
There’s no evidence that the source of the Lee Family Office’s funds is from gambling activity. But the prime minister going to raise funds at this particular mansion, on the eve of Labor’s national conference, where a fight over gambling reform is top of the agenda, was certainly a curious choice for a Monday night activity.
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Mark Di Stefano is a Rear Window columnist at The Financial Review, based in the Sydney newsroom. You can securely send him tips encrypted messaging platform Signal (@MarkDiStef.82). He previously worked at ABC, BuzzFeed News and The Information. Connect with Mark on Twitter. Email Mark at mark.distefano@afr.com
Primrose Riordan covers private companies and family offices from the AFR’s Sydney newsroom. Primrose was previously a correspondent for the Financial Times and worked in Canberra. Message Primrose on Signal: Primrose.55 or https://tinyurl.com/PrimroseSignal Connect with Primrose on Twitter. Email Primrose at primrose.riordan@afr.com
