EXCLUSIVE: Great Southern Plantations receiver McGrathNicol is under attack over the foreign sell-off of 252,000ha of farm land.
And the chief executive of the Canadian company that bought the estate has flagged burning part of it as biomass.
McGrathNicol has previously told The Weekly Times the sale process was “well advanced” when farm groups put a proposal to sell the land in smaller lots – effectively arguing the idea came too late.
However the chief executive of the Canadian purchasing company, Alberta, Leo de Bever – who is at the centre of Victorian Government investigations after he lost the state billions of dollars while working as an investment manager for the Victorian Funds Management Corporation – told the Canadian National Post “a lot of other people wanted to buy pieces” of the estate.
GSP Committee of Inspection member Phillip Capicchiano said Mr de Bever’s comments showed McGrathNicol’s claims that the sale process was “well advanced” before the proposal to sell the land in farm-sized lots came didn’t “add up”.
GSP investors were paying for McGrathNicol’s “incompetence” in not aiming to sell the land in the 650 lots it was in at the time, he said.
“To say ‘we didn’t entertain this and it came too late’ – you shouldn’t be waiting for someone to come knock on your door and say ‘I’ve got this idea’,” Mr Capicchiano said.
The estate sold for $416 million or $1646 a hectare.
Mr de Bever also flagged a plan to turn part of the estate into biomass – to create electricity by burning wood.
Australian National University climate change and land-use specialist Dr Andrew McIntosh said he was not surprised Alberta was considering burning some of the estate.
“The trees are not worth anything and that’s just a fact,” Mr McIntosh said.
Alberta again declined to comment. A spokesman for assistant treasurer Bill Shorten said the Government did “not play a role in the disposal of assets of companies in receivership”.
“Therefore, while this transaction was considered by Foreign Investment Review Board, it was not considered to be contrary to the national interest,” he said.
A spokeswoman for McGrathNicol said the receiver was “looking at all options”, during the sale process.
