Unhappy Banking’s Shannon linked to big-fee firms

The Australian 12:00am January 26, 2019

Ben Butler

EXCLUSIVE  Businesses connected to Unhappy Banking advocate Geoff Shannon charged clients sky-high fees, an investigation by The Weekend Australian ­reveals.

Emails sent by Mr Shannon also reveal he directed colleagues at the businesses, Unhappy Customers and Business And Personal Solutions, at the time when he was banned from managing companies because he was bankrupt.

Mr Shannon denies he ever controlled the relevant companies and said he was only ever an employee and a consultant at the time.

Other emails appear to show him directing a colleague to backdate an important financial document as far as legally possible as part of efforts to stave off creditors of a client.

Mr Shannon has been a leading voice in the campaign against badly behaved banks, regularly appearing in the media and at hearings into the finance sector over the past few years that helped spark the Hayne royal commission, which is due to send its final report to government next Friday.

Documents obtained by The Weekend Australian show Mr Shannon told customers security over assets including land, cars and agricultural equipment would be taken to protect them from the bank.

However, in at least two cases the business ended up either in control of some of the assets or taking legal action to enforce its security.

Public records also reveal that companies Mr Shannon controls have also accumulated a multi-million-dollar property portfolio, including a canal-side home with a pool in Port Macquarie, a motel in Emerald, Queensland, and a residential subdivision near Mildura, as well as motor vehicles, ­including a BMW X5.

Mr Shannon denied doing anything wrong, including backdating documents or managing a corporation while disqualified, and said he was not a shareholder of all but one of the companies that owned the property portfolio.

The anti-banking activist was declared bankrupt in December 2013, owing the Commonwealth Bank $8.5 million.

However, client contracts from after that date list him among the “key personnel” of Unhappy Customers and BAPS.

Contracts obtained by The Weekend Australian show Unhappy Customers and BAPS charged clients up to 20 per cent of whatever ­reduction in debt to the bank they were able to obtain.

Mr Shannon said every deal was different and in some cases the success fee was as low as 5 per cent. He said Unhappy Banking was a “brand” under which he personally did advocacy work for “no charge” and was separate to BAPS, which “services the commercial clients for a fee”.

In one case, which BAPS successfully prosecuted in the Victorian County Court against Mildura’s Dunning family in 2015, court documents show the fee charged amounted to more than $350,000. Under its agreement with the Dunnings, BAPS was also to get a slice of contracts entered into by the family’s building business, bringing the total claimed to more than $500,000.

Emails show that in October that year Mr Shannon told colleagues to date documents giving BAPS security over the assets of another client “as far back as you can go”.