More Expense Claim Allegations

Lawyers representing BubsAustralia claimed to have uncovered a slew of allegedly unauthorised expensesracked up by former CEO Kristy Carr. The datesand dollar amounts of these splurges were duly filed against Carr as part ofher legal action against Bubs – that’s after the board unceremoniously dumpedher in March.

It’s all getting a bit muckybetween them. Bubs engaged McGrathNicol to conduct a forensic review of Carr’sspending and that turned up no shortage of receipts between January 2022 andher departure in May.

The particulars tell part of thestory: a $12,050 spend on women’s clothing from Giorgio Armani; a few hundredbucks on a massage at the Ritz Carlton in Los Angeles; some $3807 on personalflights from the US to Greece. Carr, naturally, has offered explanations foreach of these spending items.

But it’s the $8227 allegedlyblown on a Panerai ‘‘Ferrari 007’’ luxury watch that’s captured Margin Call’sattention. Bubs’ lawyers at Herbert Smith Freehills helpfully listed the proofof this spending in the cross-claim, citing a receipt for the watch fromPresence Media Group, LLC, dated January 11, 2022.

A media company selling watches?That’s not our understanding of how Presence Media makes a crust.

A quick scan of the internetsuggests they specialise in online marketing and the deployment of inexplicablypopular shills on social media (read: influencers).

Receipts seen by Margin Callsuggest that rather than a watch, the $8227 appears to have been spentcontracting the high-decibel megaphones of “no-nonsense mom blogger” MeghanKing and former Home And Away actor Tammin Sursok, both ofwhom were given some cash to plug the infant milk formula brand.

Our only question is howFreehills found its way from that to a Ferrari-branded timepiece? Anything todo with Presence Media’s CEO, who just happens to be named CamilloFerrari? Surely the lawyers wouldn’t be so daft to make such a random leap ofinduction, or so one would hope.

Certainly not the fault ofMcGrathNicol, we hear. They told the Freehills lawyers during the forensicreview process that they couldn’t find any evidence substantiating a spend on aluxury watch. Looks like the lawyers pressed ahead with the claim anyway. Notto mention that the actual watch, according to Margin Call’s enquiries, costsway more than $8227.

Source : The Australian