Chinese businesswoman Sally Zou, the mysterious Liberal Party donor is
in court.
She is being sued by Lee Rossetti who says she owes him for unpaid wages
and super entitlements – a total of $1.15 million.
He alleges he was sacked two
years into a five year contract at her AusGold’s mine near Broken Hill and only
received $218,000 for two years work.
Ms Zou’s lawyers claim Mr Rossetti was never employed full time and was
only hired as a consultant.
The next hearing in the case will be in early May.
Ms Zou donated $140,000 to the Liberals during the last federal campaign
and created the Julie Bishop Glorious Foundation.
When the Foreign Minister
denied any knowledge of the fund which caused a ruckus in Parliament over foreign donations, it was disbanded. Ms Bishop's office said the Foreign Affairs Minister had been introduced to Ms Zou at various Liberal Party events but there had been no other meetings.
So who is Sally Zou?
AusGold Mining Group had ambitions to mine a gold deposit near
Tibooburra, north of Broken Hill, and former AusGold accountant Peter Johnston
said he remembered the early excitement.
"I would say probably for the first 18 months of the project it was
a pretty exciting and vibrant project," he said.
But it did not last.
"I've been 45 years in the mining industry, of which all were spent
basically accounting and administration, [and] I've never seen a bank account
conducted the way the AusGold bank account was conducted," he said.
"Money would come in, money would go out — I could never understand
the reasoning for that."
Towards the end of his time at the company he struggled to pay bills,
and preparations at the mine site stalled when a contractor who was owed money
pulled out.
"Just before Christmas, in December 2016, our finances dried
up," Mr Johnston said.
"I had no money to actually pay outstanding accounts. I'm led to
believe that's because of a tightening of funds out of China.
"There was over $400,000 owed to our creditors."
Ms Brown, who also worked for AusGold, said money seemed to be "no
object" to Ms Zou.
"She always seems to be flashing the money around and very generous
with giving out gifts and stuff like that," she said.
"But when it comes to the real world, what did she think we were
going to do?"
A backpack stuffed
with $120,000 in notes
The next few months were unpredictable.
Ms Brown said one month some people would be paid, then the next month
some other people would be paid.
"So contractors weren't getting paid, our wages weren't getting
paid but we'd come so far with Sally and we wanted to have this trust in her
and the belief in her that she was doing the right thing," she said.
"But from what I've seen, what happened in the end, I think we were
all let down really badly."
Mr Johnston said there were times when Ms Zou said she was in the bank
organising money and promised money was coming, but it never arrived.
"That happened on a regular basis from January right up to the middle
of April when we finished," he said.
In April, Mr Johnston and Ms Brown were among nine employees who were
sacked.
The termination letter stated that AusGold had suspended all work in
Broken Hill and at the mine site.
Ms Zou rarely gives interviews and declined 7.30's request.
But when asked by the ABC's Broken Hill reporter, she denied not paying
her workers.
"No I never ever stopped paying my staff, sorry," Ms Zou said.
All of the former workers except one say Ms Zou ultimately paid
what was owed to them and contractors.
But
the way one payment was made, at a meeting in Adelaide, took them by surprise.
"Basically a knapsack
Sally brought into the room emptied out $120,000 in notes," Mr Johnston
said.
Former
AusGold contractor Ana Storey was astounded.
"Nobody
deals in cash in business," she told 7.30.
"It
would have just as easily, I would have thought, been electronically
transferred, but it is what it is."
7.30
pressed Ms Zou for more information and a public relations firm responded on
her behalf.
They
said Ms Zou recognised many of her early dealings did not align with Australian
business culture and practices and she was addressing that with the guidance of
professional advisers.
They
said she thought she was doing the right thing paying her workers in cash and,
while it was common practice to do so in China, she now understood that was not
the way things were done here.
The
statement said Ms Zou had a background in engineering, finance and
international trading and she had worked in these fields in China and other
places overseas.
They
said she had no friends or family highly placed in the Chinese Government and
her money had entered the country legally and had been scrutinised by the
Federal Government's financial intelligence and regulatory agency Austrac.
Asked
about the current status of her mine project, the public relations firm
responded that it was "commercial in confidence".
