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| Image: BBC, 29.11.18 |
The Adani Carmichael coal mine set to be built in Queensland’s Galilee Basin has courted controversy like no other project in recent memory.
Central and northern Queenslanders and MPs alike have lauded the jobs and economic stimulus the project promises to provide. Elsewhere, others scratched their heads as to why the country needed to build a brand new coal mine right next to the iconic Great Barrier Reef. At the same time that Australia tries to meet its Paris climate targets, no less.
KEY POINTS
Adani’s Australian operations could be on
the brink of collapse before its Carmichael coalmine is ever built, a
forensic accountant has claimed to the ABC.
Professor Sandra van der Laan examined the
limited publicly-available financial statements from the private
company and concluded that the company was in “a very fragile, even
perilous, financial position”.
Adani was quick to reject the claims,
slamming them as “false and misleading” and the latest in a
series of attacks aimed to destroy the Australian project.
The Adani Carmichael coal mine set to be
built in Queensland’s Galilee Basin has courted controversy like no
other project in recent memory.
Despite battling for eight years to be approved, receiving the final environmental green light last month, the project finally looked to be going ahead.
But now, a forensic accountant has warned that the divisive Adani Carmichael coal mine could be on the brink of collapse before it even begins operation.
University of Sydney Professor Sandra van der Laan has sounded the alarm on the project after analysing Adani’s financial standing.
“It looks to me like a corporate collapse waiting to happen,” she told the ABC. “It has all the hallmarks of the big corporate failures we’ve seen over the last 20 to 30 years.”
She should know — van der Laan has a track record of picking corporate collapses. It was she and colleague Sue Newberry who warned in 2007 that ABC Learning, Australia’s biggest private childcare provider at the time and the world’s largest publically listed childcare company, was heading for disaster.....
“Adani Mining is in a very fragile, even perilous, financial position,” van der Laan told the ABC. “The gap between the current assets and liabilities is what’s really concerning.”
According to Adani’s most recent financial statements, provided to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) in March this year, that gap is enormous. The ABC reports that the business’ liabilities exceed its assets by more than half a billion dollars.
Moreover, the ABC reports that the company will have $1.8 billion in liabilities come due over the next 12 months, compared with just $30 million in assets. Those liabilities are largely made up by an internal loan from parent company Adani Global on which the van der Laan says the Australian operation is reliant. That’s because the Australian mine was forced to self-fund after banks and wealth funds turned their back on it.
“Effectively on paper, they are insolvent,” van der Laan said. "I wouldn’t be trading with them, as simple as that. I wouldn’t have anything to do with them."....
