The point that jumps out at me from that transcript is that this is not how a responsible adult would spend their own money renovating their house.
If a tradie showed up and said "Call me Spiro the Greek" you'd run a mile.
Perhaps a very senior person or a young and naive (ie not qualified to end up PM) person would be duped into having dodgy work done on their house by these kinds of people.
Or alternatively this is the behaviour of someone who knew they were getting mates rates and wasn't going to check anything out beforehand.
