{"id":94,"date":"2023-11-30T16:40:59","date_gmt":"2023-11-30T16:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thestar.test\/2023\/11\/30\/former-mg-chief-gary-helou-to-pay-200000-penalty-2\/"},"modified":"2023-12-02T18:45:30","modified_gmt":"2023-12-02T18:45:30","slug":"former-mg-chief-gary-helou-to-pay-200000-penalty-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/blog\/former-mg-chief-gary-helou-to-pay-200000-penalty-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Former MG chief Gary Helou to pay $200,000 penalty"},"content":{"rendered":"
\t\t\t\tWednesday, December 12th, 2018<\/span> | Posted by brad<\/a><\/span> \t\t\t<\/div>\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t<\/p>\n

Former MG chief Gary Helou to pay $200,000 penalty<\/h1>\n

THE Federal Court has ordered former Murray Goulburn Co-operative managing director\u00a0Gary Helou to pay $200,000 in penalties for being knowingly concerned in Murray Goulburn\u2019s false or misleading claims about the farmgate milk price it expected to pay dairy farmers during the 2015-16 milk season.<\/p>\n

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission deputy chair Mick Keogh said, \u201cThe penalty imposed against Mr Helou reflects his seniority at Murray Goulburn and involvement in misleading representations about the farmgate milk price.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murray Goulburn admitted to making false or misleading representations in breach of the Australian Consumer Law when it represented to farmers in Victoria, South Australia and southern New South Wales on February 29, 2016, and subsequently until April 27, 2016, that it could maintain its opening milk price of $5.60\/kg of milk solids.<\/p>\n

South Gippslanders reacted to the penalty on The Star\u2019s Facebook page, with Darren McInnes writing, \u201cDisgraceful for a man who ruined the Devondale brand\u201d and Darren Eastwood saying, \u201cPetty cash for him\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Helou has admitted he was involved in the misleading representations made by Murray Goulburn. This included not informing farmers of risks known to Murray Goulburn and making unfounded assumptions that Murray Goulburn could achieve its milk powder sachet sales targets.<\/p>\n

\u201cMurray Goulburn\u2019s misrepresentations meant farmers were not informed of the likelihood the final milk price would fall below the opening price. This was important information for farmers as it would have influenced the business decisions each farmer made,\u201d Mr Keogh said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFarmers were denied the opportunity to plan for the impact of the reduced milk price on their businesses between February and April 2016, including implementing measures to reduce their exposure to a decrease in the milk price or shopping their milk around to other dairy processors.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ACCC did not seek a penalty against Murray Goulburn because as it was a co-operative, any penalty imposed against it could end up being paid by the very farmers that were misled.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were conscious not to seek penalty orders that would adversely affect farmers for the wrongs committed by Murray Goulburn, so we focused on obtaining appropriate orders against the individuals involved in the conduct,\u201d Mr Keogh added.<\/p>\n

As part of the resolution of the proceedings, Mr Helou has undertaken to the court that he will not be involved in the dairy industry for three years.<\/p>\n

In August 2018, the ACCC resolved its proceedings against Murray Goulburn\u2019s former chief financial officer, Bradley Hingle, after he consented to an order that he pay a contribution to the ACCC\u2019s costs and gave an undertaking to the court that he wouldn\u2019t be involved in the dairy industry for three years.<\/p>\n

The court also ordered by consent that Murray Goulburn and Mr Helou pay a portion of the ACCC\u2019s legal costs.<\/p>\n

The farmgate milk price (FMP) was a weighted average price that Murray Goulburn paid to dairy farmers from whom it acquired\u00a0milk. It was stated as a dollar amount per kilogram of milk solids (kgms)<\/p>\n

Before the start of each financial year, Murray Goulburn would announce an \u2018opening price\u2019 FMP, being the average FMP that it would pay to farmers from the start of the financial year.<\/p>\n

The opening FMP was expected to be the average minimum price farmers would receive during the financial year, and it was set at a conservative amount to facilitate increases, known as \u2018step-ups\u2019, throughout the year.<\/p>\n

At or before the start of a financial year, Murray Goulburn also announced its \u2018forecast Final FMP\u2019, which was the average FMP that it expected to pay to a farmer for premium quality milk acquired from them that financial year, and which was calculated at the end of that financial year. Throughout the financial year, the forecast Final FMP was updated, typically by way of \u2018step-ups\u2019.<\/p>\n

Murray Goulburn exclusively set and revised its opening and forecast final FMP for the season.<\/p>\n

On May 1, 2018, the operating assets and liabilities of Murray Goulburn were acquired by Saputo, a Canadian multi-national. Murray Goulburn continues to exist as a legal entity but only to deal with the ACCC and ASIC proceedings and current and future class actions.<\/p>\n

Murray Goulburn retained approximately $200 million to deal with these liabilities, with any unspent money to be distributed to farmer shareholders and unitholders.<\/p>\n

Through an inquiry into the dairy industry, the ACCC made a number of recommendations, including for a mandatory code of conduct, which it hopes will address problems caused by bargaining power imbalances between processors and farmers.<\/p>\n

The maximum penalty available per contravention under the ACL at the time of the conduct was $1.1 million for corporations and $220,000 for individuals.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Penalised: former Murray Goulburn Co-operative managing director Gary Helou.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Short URL<\/strong>: \/?p=26930<\/small><\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPosted by brad<\/a> \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\ton Dec 12 2018. Filed under Rural News<\/a>. \t\t\t\t\tYou can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0<\/a>. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tYou can leave a response or trackback to this entry\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, December 12th, 2018 | Posted by brad Former MG chief Gary Helou to pay $200,000 penalty THE Federal Court has ordered former Murray Goulburn Co-operative managing director\u00a0Gary Helou to pay $200,000 in penalties for being knowingly concerned in Murray Goulburn\u2019s false or misleading claims about the farmgate milk price it expected to pay dairy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16600,"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions\/16600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thestar.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}