![]() ![]() ‘One of the biggest factors in allowing fraud and corruption to occur in companies is either poor controls or lack of oversight of those controls.’ Chris Watson, partner Grant Thorntonīy February, Downer had a report from an external investigation into the accounting irregularities relating to the power contract, which revealed that the overstatement of profits between April 2020 and June 2022, was $22.2 million rather than the $40 million feared. When asked about its interest cover ratio, which measures how easily a company can pay interest on its outstanding debt, Downer declined to comment other than to say it was meeting its financial covenants. This ratio of leverage is a measure that shows how many years it would take for a company to pay back its debt. At the end of December, Downer’s net debt to EBITDA ratio was at 2.3 times, which sits within the company’s target range of 2-2.5 times, and anything below three times is generally considered ok. In a statement, the company said that it “remains in compliance with all financial covenants”. In some examples, ICAC outlined where subcontractors had lined their pockets by inflating the price for work on a number of the government contracts awarded to Downer, while the company lost money on them. “One of the biggest factors in allowing fraud and corruption to occur in companies is either poor controls or lack of oversight of those controls,” says Chris Watson, a partner in Grant Thorton’s forensic consulting team. The ICAC investigation as it has unpicked these contracts has, within a few weeks, laid bare a culture of complacency and poor corporate governance at Downer, where the company failed to identify the shady behaviour going on under some of its top executives’ noses. ICAC hearings where bid rigging and fraud allegations have been made about rail maintenance contracts awarded to Downer EDI. Those accusations relate to a range of rail maintenance contracts that were awarded by the NSW government to Downer (and by Downer to subcontractors). When Aidan Cox, a project engineer, sat in the witness box at a NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption hearing this past week, he dobbed in one of the country’s most boring but civically important listed companies, Downer EDI, for having a corruption problem.Īnd not just a low-level corruption problem but one that in his opinion was “systemic”.Ĭox, a subcontractor, is one of about a dozen individuals, including at least six former Downer staff, who have been accused by the ICAC of either rigging contracts, inflating bids, fraud, bribery and kickbacks. ![]() Cheesy: The meaning of this word, which we will mention first among the English slang words, is not very clear and if you have heard that someone said it before, you may be confused until it is announced.Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size “Cheesy” is used to express that something is an exaggerated or obvious joke. Hearing someone calling something “super cheesy” can be funny, frustrating, and even uncomfortable and perhaps embarrassing. If somebody does something “cheesy” it can be even worse. ![]() Let’s give a few examples where the word “cheesy” is used to help understand.
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