The Save City Tatts desks are manned at all times. The flow of information pertaining to the fuck-ups and rorts past and present requires the phones to be manned 24/7. In one of those rare moments when the team got a breather The Mole and The Ferret were having a cuppa when The Mole turned to The Ferret and said “Just how big of a fuckwit was Tony Guilfoyle?”

The Ferret in their dry laconic style responded with “What makes you say that?”

The Mole then continued “Guilfoyle was on a $600k salary, he drove a prestigious motor vehicle, lived in a dress circle location, he was married with five children, was CEO of a company, he had unlimited use of the club credit cards, enjoyed unlimited holidays, had access to first class overseas travel, no accountability whatsoever because he reported to the most clueless board in the country – but due of his inability to master the basics of management he lost it all”.

The Ferret thought that The Mole had been out in the sun too long and asked “What’s your point?”. The Mole then gave their take on things: “Looking at tough times like now where social distancing is the norm and money is tight just how did Guilfoyle manage to fuck it up so badly for himself at a time when he had every possible advantage?”.

It does make you wonder how one man could have been given so much on a platter and still fuck it up. Another way to say this is if he was managing the club now it would have closed thirty minutes after coronavirus restrictions were announced. No question, he was a complete imbecile.

We often wonder did he think the rorting and stealing would go on forever?

Doesn’t say a lot for those who kept him there all those years, does it? And now they are doing the same all over again. Just look at the club today. It’s worse than when Guilfoyle was there, which is something we would have thought was impossible. But then it’s the same clueless board that appointed and backed Guilfoyle that appointed and backed Veloz. So why would anything improve?

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Here is something else for Peter Davis to apply his accounting experience to.

As previously mentioned the City Tatts property development was dishonest from the start. One of the many lies Patrick Campion told members was his promise in 2012 that the apartments in the proposed development would be sold as leasehold with City Tatts always retaining the freehold. In other words, his pitch to members was that the development would create an asset, 270 apartments, that the club would always own.

By the way, the unanimous verdict of every legal adviser we spoke to at the time was that the “leasehold apartment” sale idea would never happen.

So how did it turn out?

No surprise, a year later Campion told members that his leasehold apartment sale plan was “not feasible” and the apartments would be sold as normal strata units with then “preferred developer”, Mirvac, keeping all the profits.

Now we come to the most amazing part of this story.

Campion did not receive one dollar extra from Mirvac for this!

Yes, you heard that right. Whether City Tatts did, or did not, own the freehold to 270 apartments made no difference to the amount Campion received from Mirvac.

Now there are two possible explanations for this:

1. Campion is the dumbest man in history to ever attempt a property development
2. Campion knew all along that the apartments would never be sold as leasehold and it was just another lie to get members to approve the development

If you bump into this Peter Davis maybe you can ask him to rate Campion’s performance on this part of the property development. To help him we recommend he read Corrupt Campion’s path to a property fraud – Step 4. Leasehold Apartments?

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Has anyone seen Tony Guilfoyle? Does anyone know where he has gone? Surely a highly revered, highly thought of, highly sought after Chief Executive Officer of a prestigious company like City Tatts (yes, it’s a company) can be found. After all he isn’t the invisible man, or is he?

Actually he was invisible while at City Tatts. He had so much work to do he worked from home for half of every week. He thought it would be more efficient to remove himself from the club operations he was supposed to be supervising, and the people he needed to speak to every day, and work from home. This is what he told the committee and they swallowed it.

This is no lie. This bullshit artist “worked from home” half of every week. Now the amount of work he would have done each day could have been folded up and placed in a match box. How do we know this? Well our sources tell us he was the laziest piece of shit ever employed at City Tatts. Meetings with Guilfoyle to discuss club business turned into talkfests about himself, how smart he was, his “achievements”. Club business could wait. Sometimes he would forget why he called a meeting in the first place and just rabbit on about himself. Yes, really.

So if Guilfoyle was paid $12,000 a week but he was only doing a half weeks work he was really on $24,000 a week.

What is more surprising is that it just went on and on. An entire committee was receiving monthly reports that had all the details but no one ever stepped in and said “enough”. They just let the good times roll. Now you have the club mortgaged up to it’s eyeballs, with a Chinese developer in control, no money in the bank, the front reception desk rented out to raise revenue, and prime CBD real estate rented to a Korean souvenir shop who have no customers and are not likely to have any this year.

Is there any wonder people keep contacting the Save City Tatts desks with these stories and eye witness accounts of mismanagement, fraud and lack of corporate governance?

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Celebrity financial adviser Sam Henderson was convicted and fined $10,000 in the NSW Local Court last week for claiming he had a Master of Commerce degree which he didn’t have.

Luckily the same standards don’t apply in the property industry where you can still say whatever you want. City Tatts, and Patrick Campion in particular, support this more liberal approach and regard strict adherence to facts as unduly restrictive.

As you are no doubt aware City Tatts has been attempting a property development with a Chinese developer called Michael Mai since 2015. His father Boliang Mai is reputed to be one of the richest men in China and well connected with the Chinese Communist Party.

For a long time Michael Mai claimed to have a commerce and engineering degree from the University of Melbourne. He did attend the university. That is true, but he failed most of his subjects and never completed his degree.

So he has no qualifications from the University of Melbourne although for some reason he posed for photographs in front of one of the university buildings while wearing academic regalia. If you are curious have a look at The Australian article Chinese tycoon’s son claims bogus Melbourne degree.

No doubt about it – he’s perfect for City Tatts!

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We wanted to make sure we were on the right track with this Peter Davis so we asked another accountant for a second opinion. This is what he had to say:

“Well can I say first that City Tatts is an absolute embarrassment to the accountancy profession. Apart from the obvious mismanagement after 2004 there were serious problems in financial control that accountants should have been the first to notice. Looking at the state of the club today it’s hard to believe that two accountants, Paul Cavallaro and Jimmy Chen were on the board all that time and never once called a halt.”

“As for this Peter Davis character I am astonished that he would even say what he did never mind put it in writing. By his own analysis he is saying that the entire so-called Interim Club proposal presented to members was nonsense. In other words he is in complete agreement with the commentators who said even in 2016 that the Interim Club had so many problems it was never going to happen. It was obviously just put up to get members to approve the property development. Remember Campion and Veloz were still claiming right up to this year that the Interim Club was going ahead.”

“Now if Davis doesn’t believe this was deliberate deception then he must believe that Campion is the most incompetent club chairman ever to attempt a property development. But somehow he has no concerns about this.

“I could not imagine any accountant having anything to do with this property development, or City Tatts for that matter. But then maybe he never checked out the background before he put pen to paper”.

“Or maybe you give this guy a $2 Life Membership and he will say anything you want?”

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We have been given some vital information relating to the much talked about honorariums for City Tatts directors.

What had a lot of people confused is how the whole thing came about. Well we have heard from a very senior member of the City Tatts “inner circle” and have been advised that Marcelo Veloz is the brains behind the rort.

So while Veloz isn’t much good for anything to do with running the club he is crafty enough. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise because he managed to become CEO of City Tatts, a position for which he clearly has little ability but gets paid hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So he offers the club’s directors an honorarium each to keep them sweet, keep them onside. Guilfoyle did the exact same thing with freebies in the shape of unlimited food and drink, often $400 bottles of red and champagne. And of course weekends away, culminating in the famous Melbourne junket which was suddenly cancelled when the Sydney Morning Herald featured it.

Ok so Veloz does the offering but the directors don’t have to accept, and in fact should reject such an obvious bribe. But what do they do? They put it on the agenda for the AGM, and put their snouts in the trough.

If Veloz told the board they were entitled to an apartment in the proposed development these shysters would probably accept that too. And for what? For running the club into the ground.

This crew needs to be made accountable for accepting Marcelo Veloz’s honorariums. Talk about oiling the squeaky wheel. Veloz is more than oiling the squeaky wheel, he is playing with the last of the club’s money to keep favour with the board so he can collect his salary to the very end.

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You would think an accountant like Peter Davis would stop to think before putting his name to anything connected with Patrick Campion.

Since 2004 City Tatts has been one of the most corrupt clubs in New South Wales. And all of this corruption happened with Patrick Campion on the board.

Let’s look at just one example.

City Tattersalls Club has its own Act of Parliament and one of the provisions says that no mortgage can be placed on the club’s property without the approval of members.

Up until February 2013 there had never been a mortgage over the club’s land and buildings. But then NAB, the club’s bankers for the previous 40 years, got nervous and told City Tatts to take their business elsewhere. So Campion and then CEO Tony Guilfoyle scrambled to find another bank.

ANZ agreed to takeover the NAB loans, which by then were $20 million – but only if they got a mortgage over the club’s property. But this would have required a Special General Meeting and alerted members.

So what did Patrick Campion do?

Yes, Campion mortgaged the club’s property to ANZ Bank. No meeting, no announcement. Nothing. And he’s a solicitor!

So Campion contravened the City Tattersalls Club Act. This is a documented fact and no amount of photo opportunities or prepared press releases can ever alter it.

(For further details please see Corrupt Campion’s path to a property fraud – Step 2. The Illegal Mortgage)

Aren’t accountants supposed to check things before putting pen to paper?

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Remember Crosby, Stills & Nash?

They were one of the first “supergroups”, that is a group composed of members who were already famous in other groups. Dave Crosby was in The Byrds, Stephen Stills came from Buffalo Springfield and Graham Nash was in The Hollies.

What does that have to do with City Tatts, you say?

Well City Tatts had Tweedledum, Humpty Dumpty and Balls Deep, all now departed and currently pursuing solo careers.

Why don’t these three form a “superclub”?

Balls Deep is currently on the lam. He could look up Humpty Dumpty and see what he is doing. Old Humpty has a bit of free time on his hands these days.

And why not recruit Tweedledum as well? They could start a club together. Balls Deep could wait on tables, Humpty could pretend he was doing the books , just like he pretended he was doing the books at City Tatts for thirty odd years. And Tweedledum could roam around with a blank piece of paper in his hand pretending he was busy, like he did while he was at City Tatts.

Given Tweedledum’s track record in grooming female staff and Balls Deep getting caught up to his nuts in guts with a female staff member we think they have a lot in common and would make great business partners.

Truth is though if they did go into business they would go broke quicker than coronavirus spread through the men’s gym.

But just think of the entertainment they would provide before they split!

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It’s hard to know what to say about Peter Davis.

As you know, after years of promising that 202-204 Pitt Street would remain open as an “Interim Club” Pat Campion finally admitted this year it would never happen. So Campion is now promoting the use of the Catholic Club in Castlereagh Street as the new City Tatts “Interim Club” during construction.

As part of the campaign to get members to approve this Marcelo Veloz got some members to write letters in support of the resolution. One of them is from a new Life Member Peter Davis (Member No. 15029).

In his letter Davis gives a lot of sensible reasons why the Interim Club was a bad idea. But that can only mean that everything Campion told members for four years about the Interim Club was wrong. Badly wrong. But strangely Davis makes no mention of that. Is is that he doesn’t know? Doesn’t think it is important? Doesn’t care? Or thinks it should be swept under the carpet?

The bigger problem is that the whole “Interim Club” idea was just another dishonest ploy in a property development that was dishonest from the start. Any accountant who looked at this would know that City Tatts cannot survive this property development. The deal agreed with the developer is just too bad for the club to survive.

So anyone lending support to Campion and Veloz is just working for the Chinese developer.

Maybe Peter Davis should add the letters “FOOL” to his name.

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Remember the great white hope, the Korean souvenir shop? This place was set to deliver rent to the club that would outstrip any poker machine or bank of poker machines for that matter. Well how’s it going now?

We have been watching since it reopened and it’s very quiet. No surprises there with national borders closed, and we wonder if the place is paying any rent.

It must be said Patrick Campion, in his position of director and lawyer, did a sterling job in allowing the dismantling of two gilt edged tenants, the National Australia Bank and the NSW State Lotteries, to make way for a non-revenue-generating foyer. Given that he was so good at making decisions when he allowed this to go through without a whimper why did he allow a Korean souvenir shop to be added to the club’s suite of offerings to raise revenue through rental income? What’s good enough for the goose is good enough for the gander we think so if you are going to allow your under-performing CEO namely Tony Guilfoyle to rip up your premium rental agreements with AAA rated companies, why would you allow a Korean souvenir shop be installed as your saviour? It just doesn’t make any sense and shows how Campion’s brain works, or doesn’t work more to the point.

But wait a minute. Maybe his decision to approve the Koreans moving in was simply desperation? If so does he believe he has done a good job as Chairman and director? If he does let us tell him he is delusional.

If allowing a Korean $2 shop into the club is the answer then we hate to say it but the place is well and truly fucked.

Save City Tatts Committee