An Australian travel giant caught in a $240 million overcharging scandal has revealed signed agreements with a UK customer may have been faked.
Brisbane-based Corporate Travel Management on Wednesday morning detailed a laundry list of concerns about the ballooning scandal: it had not returned refunds, had kept customer overpayments, overcharged clients and even “amended” audit evidence.
The problems embroil the UK arm of the $2 billion Corporate Travel and stem back to 2019, with a key stung client being the British government.
“The scale of this issue is almost a quarter of a billion Australian dollars. It’s pretty stunning,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Wei-Weng Chen said on investor briefing call on Wednesday morning.
Trading of Corporate Travel Management’s shares have been suspended since last year. (Supplied: Corporate Travel Management)
Corporate Travel, which had its shares frozen on the ASX last year, arranges business trips for clients ranging from Australian parliamentarians to big businesses such as Wesfarmers. In the UK, it has run accommodation for refugees and helped repatriate citizens for the government during the coronavirus pandemic.
The company grew rapidly after being founded, with only two employees, in 1994 by Jamie Pherous, who has sold almost $125 million in shares and even hired singer Jimmy Barnes to sing at his 50th birthday party on Hamilton Island.
Jamie Pherous started Corporate Travel in 1994 with two employees. (Facebook: Corporate Travel Management)
But short-sellers, who make money from share prices falling, repeatedly accused the business of questionable accounting and even raised doubts about its seemingly fat European margins. Corporate Travel rejected the claims at the time.
Then, Corporate Travel last year suspended shares after its auditors Deloitte found problems. The company hired KPMG for a review and the details of what went wrong were finally revealed on Wednesday.
“We acknowledge the findings are difficult and confronting,” Corporate Travel chairman Ewen Crouch told the investor call.
The company revealed it might have to reverse revenue of up to 128 million pounds ($241 million) between the 2019 financial year and the first half of the current financial year. That is up from earlier estimates of 77 million pounds.
A big problem extends to a contract in the UK starting in 2021. While Corporate Travel did not name the customer, the UK government has previously confirmed being hit with an “appalling” overbilling.
Corporate Travel last year suspended shares after its auditors found problems. (Supplied: Corporate Travel Management)
Corporate Travel on Wednesday said the contract in 2021 meant it had to “rapidly source accommodation for thousands of people” and sometimes requests only came verbally.
It arranged almost 1.4 million nights for people at more than 60 hotels and the company’s “process and controls environment was challenged given the rapid and large scale of the engagement”.
Corporate Travel said by late 2022 it found a gap of 54.6 million pounds between the amounts it paid to hotels, and what it was charging the customer.
The company said it had decided then to arrange for refunds of up to 28 million pounds with the customer, by providing services in lieu of that amount in the future.
Signed agreements about this were presented by a key UK executive, whom Corporate Travel identified as Michael Healy, to the company.
But due to KPMG’s review, Corporate Travel by November last year “became aware of a suggestion that the letter agreements may not, in fact, be authentic”, the company told investors.
“This contradicted the position understood and relied on by the board,” the company said.
The customer has since told Corporate Travel “it has no record of the letter agreements”.
Corporate Travel said further digging unveiled concerns about “misconduct” by the British executive for other contracts including non-return of refunds to customers, retaining customer overpayments, “amendment of contractual material and audit evidence” and “charging of amounts in excess of contractual entitlement”.
Authorities had been contacted, Corporate Travel said.
Consultant says time span of problems poses questions
Corporate Travel painted only the UK executive as being behind problems, but added it was improving financial controls and conducting a review for a “broader uplift” in areas including governance.
Tony O’Connor, a veteran consultant for the business travel industry, told the ABC the almost seven-year time span of problems posed further questions about awareness within the company of issues.
“How do you keep doing that on that scale if it’s just you?” he said.
Mr O’Connor said the problem with the accommodation pricing raised the possibility of Corporate Travel having issued mark-ups on hotels charged to its customer. He said mark-ups might not be prohibited but were a grey area and could cause trouble if charged to corporate clients.
He said the various scandals posed a potential long-term risk to retaining clients for Corporate Travel.
Mr Pherous, who is not accused of wrongdoing, resigned in February this year as the scandal deepened. Attempts to obtain comment from him on Wednesday were unsuccessful.
Jamie Pherous resigned from Corporate Travel in February this year. (Supplied)
The amount to finally be refunded is yet to be decided, with Corporate Travel already having paid 12 million pounds and potentially recovering some taxes paid on wrongly booked revenue.
Corporate Travel said it had $115.7 million in cash and could potentially borrow $75 million as of last month.
RBC analyst Mr Chen told clients the possibility of Corporate Travel needing to raise funds from shareholders “would not be out of the question”.
He also said one of the most troubling disclosures was that the purported refund agreement of 28 million pounds, stemming from the late 2022 discovery, had not been detailed to the market at the time.
Corporate Travel’s Mr Crouch said at the time the company had consulted with its then auditors.
