Lex Greensill pressed Australian prime minister Scott Morrison to introduce a lending scheme for government workers in a lobbying effort that included a misdirected WhatsApp message citing David Cameron.
In the October 2019 message, intended for Morrison but sent by mistake to a different number, the financier played on his association with the former British prime minister: “David Cameron, who is on our board and a material shareholder, speaks most highly of you,” Greensill wrote.
In reality, Cameron was a paid adviser rather than a board member and was not a material shareholder, although he is believed to have options that could have entitled him to about 1 per cent of Greensill Capital. At one stage, these were thought to be worth tens of millions of pounds but since Greensill Capital’s collapse last month are now worthless.
Greensill then pitched an idea “we are about to announce with the UK government — where we give all NHS employees the option to get paid every day”, adding: “It is something we think would be a powerful policy in Australia (and one I will carry the cost of as a gift to the nation).”
The financial product — offered through a Greensill subsidiary called Earnd — was later rolled out to frontline NHS workers as the first wave of coronavirus hit the UK in March 2020.
Greensill announced live on Sky News that his company would enable doctors and nurses to cash a part of their pay cheque every day, at no additional cost. Earnd, which had its own advisory board that included former Labour politician David Blunkett, filed for administration last month.
The Australian government was more sceptical than the UK about the merits of Greensill’s schemes in spite of a sustained lobbying effort that included Cameron.
Scrutiny is growing over Cameron’s dealings with Greensill during his time as prime minister and after he joined Greensill Capital in 2018. His work has included privately lobbying the UK government to increase the finance group’s access to pandemic loan schemes and even visiting a little-known insurance firm in Sydney, where an underwriter was later dismissed for allegedly providing too much coverage to Greensill.
Later in October 2019, Greensill met with Morrison. “Mr Greensill was referred to meet with relevant staff in the Prime Minister’s office if he wished to provide a detailed proposal,” said a spokesperson for the prime minister. “The Australian government did not pursue any part of Mr Greensill’s proposal.”
At Davos the following January, Greensill pitched the idea to Australia’s then finance minister Mathias Cormann, at a meeting that included Cameron and former Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop — newly hired as an adviser by Greensill.
Briefing notes prepared for the meeting by government officials show Cormann agreed to meet the Greensill delegation between 5.30pm and 6pm on January 22. His office requested a briefing note from officials, which was later released under freedom of information rules and describes Greensill’s flexible pay scheme as “economically similar to payday lending” and urges the government to take a cautious approach.
“Any consideration of the Scheme for use by Australian Government entities would need to consider legal regulatory and procurement requirements and the benefits, costs and risks to the Government and its employees,” said the briefing note. The late October and January meetings were first reported by The Australian.
Cormann, who was last month appointed secretary-general of the OECD, told the FT the media interest generated by his meeting with Greensill, Bishop and Cameron was “ridiculous” because he never promoted any aspect of Greensill’s proposal and nothing ever came of it.
“I ran into somebody at the World Economic Forum that was there with Julie Bishop, at a function that I was co-hosting with Julie Bishop,” Cormann told the FT. “You know he had a five to 10 minute conversation with me, and that is the first and the last that I've ever had anything to do with that.”
The misdirected message, seen by the FT, also refers to an event attended by Morrison and Sanjeev Gupta, the British steel magnate whose GFG Alliance group has now defaulted on billions of dollars of debt from Greensill Capital.
It contains familiar themes from Greensill’s patter, including references to his family farm. “I can say as someone who has lived abroad for the past 20 years that Australia is an extraordinary country and will always be home to me,” he wrote, pointing to the jobs created by his family in Queensland.
Greensill’s brother Peter heads a large agricultural operation near Bundaberg, a city in Australia’s farming belt. Greensill Farming Group specialises in producing sugarcane, sweet potatoes and watermelons.
Greensill made his experience of growing up on this family farm central to his corporate vision of helping small companies get paid faster, through an often repeated origin story about the financial hardships his parents suffered when large corporations delayed payments.
Spokesmen for Greensill and Cameron declined to comment.
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2021-04-09 04:00:35Z
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