Pages

Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Accounting giant sued for $140m over Twigg’s ‘fraudulent’ scheme

 Accounting giant sued for $140m over Twigg’s ‘fraudulent’ scheme

National accountancy firm Pitcher Partners has been accused of “knowingly assisting” former businessman Max Twigg to rip off his mother in a lawsuit that could leave the firm on the hook for $140 million in damages.

Diane Twigg is alleging Pitcher Partners breached its fiduciary duties to her and several family trusts several times from 2007 to 2019 as part of “a fraudulent and dishonest” scheme set up by Mr Twigg and allegedly “assisted” by the firm, in which Mr Twigg spent tens of millions of the family’s dollars on an “extravagant lifestyle”.

Mr Twigg sold the family waste business, Twigg Group, to Cleanaway for $155.8 million in 2007 and put the proceeds – bar $5 million for his mother and each of his two sisters – into a family trust account, which he then spent on luxury cars, houses and various properties, including the iconic Byron Bay Beach Hotel, without their knowledge.

Max Twigg pictured in December 2016. 

Ms Twigg and her daughters successfully suedhim over these unauthorised transactions in 2020, with the NSW Supreme Court slamming his conduct as “dishonest” and ordering him to repay his family. The decision was upheld by the NSW Court of Appeal.

But while the three women have received $30 million compensation from Mr Twigg’s assets, Ms Twigg is now seeking the balance of their alleged losses from Pitcher Partners, who acted as advisers to her, her son and several family trusts on tax, accounting, corporate governance and structuring, succession planning and trust distributions.

In a statement of claim filed in the NSW Supreme Court last week, she claimed that Pitcher Partners breached its fiduciary duties to her and three separate trusts of which she is a trustee by assisting Mr Twigg in his fraud.

“Pitcher Partners advised and assisted Max Twigg in [his] conduct,” Ms Twigg’s statement of claim read, claiming that he was “able to distribute” the proceeds of the Twigg Group sale to himself “as a consequence of [this] knowing assistance”.

“In so doing, the defendants breached their fiduciary duty of undivided loyalty to the plaintiffs and further knowingly assisted Max Twigg in a fraudulent and dishonest design.”

The claim alleges that Pitcher Partners “assisted Max Twigg in the execution of that fraudulent or dishonest design” regarding the purchase of a landfill site by, among other services, advising on its incorporation into a family trust and setting up governance structures that allegedly breached prior advice it had given the family.

The statement of claim said Pitcher Partners had “actual knowledge of the breaches” by Mr Twigg and “wilfully shut its eyes to those matters”.

It alleged that the accountancy “wilfully and recklessly failed to make inquiries that an honest and reasonable person would make” about whether Mr Twigg was breaching his own fiduciary duties to his mother and the three trusts and that “an honest or reasonable person” would have known his conduct was likely flouting these obligations.

She also alleged that Pitcher Partners “advised and assisted” Mr Twigg in shifting the proceeds of the Twigg Group sale to himself, despite its fiduciary duties to her and “knowing [he] was engaged in a dishonest or fraudulent design”.

Ms Twigg alleged one such director’s resolution was prepared by Pitcher Partners without her signature and undated, despite this breaching the trust’s constitution.

Ms Twigg claimed Pitcher Partners owed her and the three trusts around $140 million in damages, including $30 million regarding the landfill acquisition and $97.9 million for the original family trust’s 2007 cash proceeds. It also claimed compensation for an unspecified amount for its 2008, 2009 and 2010 proceeds.

But the statement of claim said any damages could be reduced by the compensation already recovered from Mr Twigg, which included $7.4 million in cash, $11.4 million in shares, four Gold Coast properties worth a combined $7.1 million, and a caravan and three cars worth more than $1 million.

The case builds on a growing trend of investorsand individuals focusing their litigation efforts on the deep-pocketed advisers to wrongdoers or collapsed companies, such as their auditors or lawyers, in the hope of recovering more of their losses. Pitcher Partners is yet to file its defence.

Find out the inside scoop about Accenture, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PwC and McKinsey. Sign up to our weekly Professional Life newsletter.


Happy Flying - 11 Alternative Search Engines That Find What Google Can’t

There is an old Slavic saying – ‘Don’t approach a goat from the front, a horse from the back, or a fool from any side.’ Fools are plentiful around the world.


11 Alternative Search Engines That Find What Google Can’t - MakeUseOf: “Google Search still can’t do everything. These alternative search engines can take care of a few niche jobs for you. Other obscure search engines might actually show you your search from an entirely different perspective. 1. Ecosia Google does a lot of good for the world in its own way. Ecosia does its part, too, albeit from a slightly different angle. This search engineuses a modified Bing custom search—no second-rate APIs here…”>


CRS Report – Big Tech in Financial Services, May 16, 2022: “For the past decade or so, “Big Tech”—which hereinafter refers to the large technology companies Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook (now Meta Platforms), unless otherwise noted—has been offering a variety of financial services products to retail customers. Big Tech uses advanced data analysis and novel partnerships with traditional financial institutions to redefine financial services. The financial service with unanimous participation among Big Tech companies is payments. 



Global Farming on the front lines: How Ukraine’s farmers are dodging bombs to feed the world

Grid: “The country [Ukraine] is a major supplier of key staples — in particular corn, wheat and sunflower oil. Countries around Europe and beyond depend on the land long known as a “bread basket” of Europe; there were nearly 50,000 active farms across Ukraine prior to the war. In the most recent estimates, roughly 10 percent of Egypt’s domestic wheat supply came from Ukraine; in Indonesia, the figure was almost a third. All told, Ukraine accounts for roughly 16 percent of the world’s exports of corn, and around 10 percent of global wheat and barley. For sunflower oil, the figure is more than 40 percent. And as Grid has reported, war has interrupted these supplies. Now, the spring planting season — which begins during March and April — is unfolding against the backdrop of a Russian invasion. 

All of which means that the world is watching — not only the military movements of the war in Ukraine, but the movements of Yuriy Russu and the nation’s farmers as well. The question is critical for Ukraine and all those countries that depend on it: Can a nation plant and harvest its crops in the middle of a war?…”


Current Affairs, May 2022 – UC-Berkeley’s Nicholas Weaver has been studying cryptocurrency for years. He thinks it’s a terrible idea that will end in disaster. “Despite being hyped in expensive Super Bowl ads, cryptocurrency is now having a difficult moment. As the New York Times reports, “the crypto world went into a full meltdown this week in a sell-off that graphically illustrated the risks of the experimental and unregulated digital currencies.” One of cryptocurrency’s most vocal skeptics is Nicholas Weaver, senior staff researcher at the International Computer Science Institute and lecturer in the computer science department at UC Berkeley. 


BBC – “Learning a new language can be tricky, but how many words do you need to know before you can actually get by in a foreign tongue? That was the question posed to BBC Radio 4’s More or Less programme by one frustrated listener. Despite learning German for three years, and practising nearly every day, they still couldn’t seem to retain more than 500 words I was hoping,” they wrote, “you could give me a shortcut, by working out how many words we actually use on a regular basis.” To work out how many words you need to know to be able to speak a second language we decided to look into how many words we know in our first language, in our case English. We considered dusting off the dictionary and going from A1 to Zyzzyva, however, there are an estimated 171,146 words currently in use in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, not to mention 47,156 obsolete words. 

To quote a well-known internet meme “ain’t nobody got time for that”. What we needed was a mathematical cheat. Fortunately for us somebody beat us to it. Linguists Paul Nation and John Read (who doesn’t love a bit of nominative determinism?), along with their colleague Robin Goulden, came up with a test involving only 50 words. 

Their theory is that if you count up how many of the 50 words you understand and multiply the total by 500 you are able to estimate your total English vocabulary. Words start off simply enough; dog, editor, immense but they quickly become more obscure, for example would you know how to use “oleaginous” …in a sentence? And now Paul’s free English vocabulary size test, using 100 words, is available online...If you learn only 800 of the most frequently-used lemmas in English, you’ll be able to understand 75% of the language as it is spoken in normal life…”

How many words do you need to speak a language? - BBC



Your Bosses Could Have a File on You, and They May Misinterpret It

There is an old Slavic saying – ‘Don’t approach a goat from the front, a horse from the back, or a foolish boss from any side.’ Fools are plentiful around the world.


The mailbox contained names, addresses, ages, email addresses, phone numbers, super account numbers and the balances of members from the 2019-20 financial year. No tax file numbers, driver’s licence details or bank account details are said to have been stolen.

50k customers caught up in Spirit Super phishing attack


Your Bosses Could Have a File on You, and They May Misinterpret It The New York Times: “Are you an “insider threat?” The company [or federal government employer] you work for may want to know. Some corporate employers fear that employees could leak information, allow access to confidential files, contact clients inappropriately or, in the extreme, bring a gun to the office. To address these fears, some companies subject employees to semi-automated, near-constant assessments of perceived trustworthiness, at times using behavioral science tools like psychology…

The language around this sort of worker-watching often mirrors that which is used within the government, where public agencies assess workers who receive security clearances to handle sensitive information related to intelligence collection or national security. Organizations that produce monitoring software and behavioral analysis for the feds also may offer conceptually similar tools to private companies, either independently or packaged with broader cybersecurity tools…”




Brockman Found Competent to Stand Trial

In the gorilla of tax crimes cases, United States v. Brockman (S.D. Tex. Crim  4:21-CR-9), CL Docket Entries here, the Court yesterday denied Brockman’s attempt to avoid trial by feigning, so the Court found, incompetence.  The Memorandum Opinion and Order (“Order”) so holding is here (Dkt # 263). 




Wired: “As companies increasingly involve AI in their hiring processes, advocates, lawyers, and researchers have continued to sound the alarm. Algorithms have been found to automatically assign job candidates different scores based on arbitrary criteria like whether they wear glasses or a headscarf or have a bookshelf in the background. Hiring algorithms can penalize applicants for having a Black-sounding name, mentioning a women’s college, and even submitting their résumé using certain file types. They can disadvantage people who stutter or have a physical disability that limits their ability to interact with a keyboard. 

All of this has gone widely unchecked. But now, the US Department of Justice and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have offered guidance on what businesses and government agencies must do to ensure their use of AI in hiring complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act. “We cannot let these tools become a high-tech pathway to discrimination,” said EEOC chair Charlotte Burrows in a briefing with reporters on Thursday. The EEOC instructs employers to disclose to applicants not only when algorithmic tools are being used to evaluate them but what traits those algorithms assess.

 “Today we are sounding an alarm regarding the dangers tied to blind reliance on AI and other technologies that we are seeing increasingly used by employers,” assistant attorney general for civil rights Kristen Clark told reporters in the same press conference. “Today we are making clear that we must do more to eliminate the barriers faced by people with disabilities, and no doubt: The use of AI is compounding the long-standing discrimination that job seekers with disabilities face.”


Beckett Cantley (Northeastern) & Geoffrey Dietrich (Cantley Dietrich), CIC Services v. IRS: the Supreme Court Hands the IRS a Major Loss, 5 Bus. Entrepreneurship & Tax L. Rev. __ (2021):

The Anti-Injunction Act (“AIA”) is an important part of administrative procedure law and a crucial piece of the United States tax system. Enacted to help expedite the tax revenue process, the Act works to invalidate any lawsuit to restrict the assessment or collection of taxes. Nonetheless, having the power to bar standing and having the right to do so are two completely different things. For instance, while the AIA gives the power to bar suits brought against administrative rulemaking processes, the Act does not give this right unless the suit was brought with the purpose of restraining the assessment of a tax.


An Ancient Indian Temple With 56 Musical Pillars That Play Individual Notes When StruckLaughing Squid


Police say they have ‘dismantled’ Alameddine crime network after arresting 18 people ABC Australia. “[E]ach phone could generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in drug sales, with one of the seized devices having 700 contacts and making $250,000 each week alone…. [T]here has been a number of murders in regards to these phones.”

Monday, May 30, 2022

The Healing Power of Flowers

 Open Maps for Europe


The Healing Power of Flowers, Light, and Variety: Florence Nightingale’s Remedy for Physical Breakdown and Psychological Burnout

“People say the effect is only on the mind. It is no such thing. The effect is on the body, too.”



  1. “For any hypothetical future apply the ‘Shakespeare Test,’ which asks: Are there still aspects of Shakespeare’s work reflected in the future civilization?… For do any of us want to live in a world where Shakespeare is obsolete?” — Erik Hoel on why it’s important that the future be human
  2. “It really is unfair to a great number of people, past, present, and future, that current student debt holders would benefit from loan forgiveness while others cannot” — but that by itself doesn’t settle the matter, says Barry Lam (Vassar), because “almost every policy is unfair”
  3. “There is a kind of covert moralism that people build into the causal structure of the universe that justifies overly focusing on being the right kind of person, objecting to the right kinds of things, centering the right sorts of people. This amounts to a refusal to look forward” — Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (Georgetown) is interviewed about his two recent books
  4. “What you need is to have the classroom as a space where we’re not talking left wing and right wing but offering the learning that students need to be able to come to their own positions and judgments” — Wendy Brown (Princeton) interviewed about politicization, academic freedom, free speech, and today’s students
  5. “I contrast the essential-bum-origin view with a phenomenological view, and I argue in favour of the latter” — Bill Capra on the metaphysics of farts
  6. Three key tips for philosophy students seeking to work outside of academia — from Ryan Stelzer, who finished an MA in philosophy, worked in the White House, and now has his own consulting firm
  7. The “famous” Michael Huemer – Richard Yetter-Chappell debate about utilitarianism — hosted by Matthew Adelstein (video)

$2 Trillion, or 70%, Pandemic Wealth Gain of Nation’s 740 Richest

 $2 Trillion, or 70%, Pandemic Wealth Gain of Nation’s 740 Richest

Americans For Tax Fairness: “American billionaires saw their collective net worth climb by $2 trillion, or 70%, during the first two years of the pandemic to a staggering $5 trillion, according to Forbes data analyzed by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF). [See table below and all data here] But none of that wealth growth—the main source of billionaire income—may ever be taxed. The total number of U.S. billionaires increased from 614 to 741 over the two-year period from March 18, 2020, to April 5, 2022. Loopholes often allow billionaires to pay little or no federal income tax. An expose last year by ProPublica based on IRS data revealed that Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other top billionaires paid zero federal income taxin several recent years. It determined that the top 25 billionaires paid just a 3.4% tax rate between 2014 to 2018 when the growth in their wealth is counted as income. White House economists have determined the nation’s 400 richest billionaires paid a tax rate of only 8.2% over a recent nine-year span when the increased value of their corporate stock was counted as income. The average federal income-tax rate for all taxpayers was 13.3% in 2019. Billionaires and other very wealthy people overwhelmingly generate income not from a job or small business, but from the growth in the value of their investments. But that form of income is never taxed unless the investments are sold. Yet the very wealthy do not need to sell their assets to turn the increasing value of their wealth into cash income; instead, they use their swelling fortunes to secure special low-interest loans allowing them to live lavishly without paying income taxes. Moreover, a lifetime of such income growth from assets can be passed onto the next generation tax-free…”



University of Colorado Law Review > PrintedVolume 93 > Issue 1 > Robophobia by Andrew Keane Woods

“Robots—machines, algorithms, artificial intelligence—play an increasingly important role in society, often supplementing or even replacing human judgment. Scholars have rightly become concerned with the fairness, accuracy, and humanity of these systems. Indeed, anxiety about machine bias is at a fever pitch. While these concerns are important, they nearly all run in one direction: we worry about robot bias against humans; we rarely worry about human bias against robots. 


Why We Can’t House the Homeless


The scum on the Mother Earth that awful  South African billionaire is getting more oxygen … bizarre as some take his observations seriously 

 Elon Musk Should Have Been Stopped Long Before He Came for Twitter Francine McKenna, Time. From April, still germane. Good to see McKenna in TIme!

World’s richest man Elon Musk says recession would be a ‘GOOD’ thing because it’ll hurt unproductive work-from-home crowd and ‘foolish’ business owners he says deserve to go bankrupt Daily Mail

OK, try “squillonaire”: