In 2021 nine politicians including Albanese were told of Chris Jordan's previous direct involvement with a company in a secrecy jurisdiction. But none asked governance questions about what the former Tax Commissioner was doing with an Isle of Man company.
Chris Jordan’s valuable insights into shell companies
Neil Chenoweth Senior writer
Jul 23, 2024
Labor’s
plan for a beneficial owners register seems to have suffered the same fate as Malcolm Turnbull’s
stab at it in 2017: a consultation process after the election, then little more
is heard.
It
didn’t help that former tax commissioner Chris
Jordan wasn’t a supporter of the register. Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson
knows this because he asked him about it.
Former tax commissioner Chris
Jordan didn’t see any point to a register to identify the people behind shell
companies. Alex
Ellinghausen
In
2016, Jordan was the hero of the hour, leading the international collaboration
to follow up the Panama Papers (documents leaked from law firm Mossack
Fonseca). They “demand purposeful and swift action,” he promised. “I will not
simply stand by and admire this problem.”
Turnbull
made a beneficial owners register an election promise, amid general fervour for
reform. One of the only contra notes came from curmudgeonly John Passant, a former
assistant commissioner of tax and University of Canberra law lecturer.
Passant,
who died in 2020, grumbled in a letter to The
Sydney Morning Herald in April 2016: “It seems appropriate for the
Commissioner of Taxation, Chris Jordan, to allay any concerns we taxpayers
might have about his previous position as a partner in tax and accounting firm
KPMG. For instance, under his watch, did any arrangements involve tax havens?”
In
fact, Jordan could offer a unique perspective on this. So, when Whish-Wilson
asked him about the register a year later at Senate Estimates in May 2017,
Jordan could have answered many ways.
One
way would have been to say: “Well, it’s funny you should ask, because back in
the day I helped a mate set up a shell company in the Isle of Man and I received
close to $1 million in payments from it, and that just goes to show there are
many completely legitimate ways to use secrecy jurisdictions, so let’s be
careful about a register.”
That
would be transparent. What Jordan actually said was: “A register of beneficial
ownership is just, you know, what someone says someone else owns so … it could
be good, but it could be just a lot of stuff that doesn’t really help us.
“Because
if … people want to do the wrong thing, they’ll be putting all sorts of different
names in places, so I’m not sure it’s a panacea as such.”
Jordan
wasn’t a supporter. Nothing wrong with that! But it underlines the ongoing
awkwardness he created by failing to disclose his previous history when he
became commissioner in 2013, and in annual disclosures since then until he
stepped down in February.
Last
month, The Australian
Financial Review revealed how Jordan, with fellow KPMG partner
Wayne Jones, helped a
friend set up Dinnans Limited in the Isle
of Man in 1998 before it received $3.38 million from an unknown party.
There
were also claims Jones made in a 2018 court case, that Jordan had made up to
$415,000 in undocumented loans, ostensibly to fund Jones’ casino junkets
business. Jones said he repaid the debt via a property transfer to Jordan’s
wife days before Jones’ bankruptcy proceedings.
These
deals were not necessarily improper, but they’re very unusual for a future tax
commissioner. It was important for the government to know about them, and
governance experts said Jordan should have disclosed them.
Then
again, how was it that in his 11 years as commissioner, no one asked about
these matters? It’s believed an ATO audit of Jones discovered the Dinnans
payments in 2017, but nothing came of it.
In
June 2021, an anonymous letter spelled out in detail Jordan’s link to Dinnans,
and went on to make unproven allegations about it.
The
letter was sent to nine current and former politicians, including
then-opposition leader Anthony
Albanese, Senator Penny
Wong, then attorney-general Michaelia Cash, Greens leader Adam Bandt, and
senators Jacqui Lambie
and Pauline Hanson;
five senior regulators and public servants; and eight journalists and media
organisations.
Given
the critical position Jordan held, it seems a simple governance interest that
the government should have checked out, even if just to dismiss any doubt.
But
nothing came of it. The issue was swallowed up in silence – much like the
beneficial owners register.
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Neil Chenoweth is an investigative
reporter for The Australian Financial Review. He is based in Sydney and has won
multiple Walkley Awards. Connect with Neil on
Twitter. Email Neil at nchenoweth@afr.com.au
