The Sands Golf Resort Torquay wrongfully received $500k for quarantine hosting
The Daniel Andrews Government gave more than $500,000 to a Chinese-owned resort as part of its bungled hotel quarantine program, but it never housed a single returned traveller.
Owing the ATO
The Sands Golf Resort Torquay received payment from the state government for 55 rooms costing $150 per room a night between March 29 and May 29, with taxpayers footing the $511,500 bill.
But the resort, owned by the Walden Cloud Group, went into administration on July 11 – owing the Australian Taxation Office over $990,000.
The Sands isn’t the only hotel to receive money from Premier Daniel Andrews despite having never housed any returned travellers.
The Victorian government forked out millions of dollars worth of retainer contracts to at least a dozen other hotels, The Australian reports.
Aly Boland, a former employee at The Sands, said resort staff knew the hotel wasn’t coping financially when the government awarded it a hotel quarantine contract.
Staff not getting paid
Ms Boland said employees would ‘hold their breaths’ every week to see if they would even get paid.
‘People asked me why I was sticking around, and to be honest when we got the hotel quarantine contract, I thought, “Well at least there’s money coming in so we’ll hopefully get paid”,’ she said.
‘There was no training, nothing. A month went by and then there was another contract, but they still didn’t pay our super, so I guess that money just went to China. Who knows?
‘I’m just a little bit taken aback by the fact that the government gave $500,000 to a company that clearly was being investigated by the ATO.’
Sanctioned by border force
Ms Boland also claims the company still owes her $7000 in superannuation and entitlements.
Another employee said if anyone bothered to look over the hotel’s books, they would have realised how much the Walden Cloud Group owed to creditors.
According to ASIC documents, the Walden Cloud Group’s directors are Chinese-born Guoxin Zhou, who lives in Torquay, and Yang Sun, also born in China, who lives in Sydney’s southwest.
The resort had also been sanctioned by Australian Border Force for visa fraud less than a week before it received the first hotel quarantine contract from Mr Andrews.
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Image: tripadvisor
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