City coffers face big hit over miner debts
Andrew Brosnan
October 26, 2015, 5:54 pm
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Big budget whack
The City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder’s budget has been struck a blow in the form of unpaid rates, with a mining company that owes the City more than half a million dollars now in the hands of receivers.
Fairstar Resources went into receivership in July, with a list of unsecured creditors collectively owed $5,177,761 and employee entitlements totalling more than $188,000.
The City stands high on the list of unsecured creditors in terms of the debt owed to it by Fairstar, with receiver Simon Theobald reporting last month money owed to the local government totalled $635,741.
Shortly after it announced the appointment of receivers Fairstar’s quarterly report for the period ending June 2015 showed the company had a cash balance of $34,000, up from $19,000 the previous quarter.
The only unsecured creditors owed more money than the City are Greywood Holdings Pty Ltd, Fairstar’s managing director Kevin Robertson and former non-executive director Con Markopoulos.
Fairstar has held 11 mining tenements within the City’s boundaries, with its debt to the authority primarily relating to unpaid rates for those leases.
However, acting chief executive Braden Fisher said the cost of the City’s previous attempts to recover the outstanding rates had added to the debt.
“The debts are rates owed to the City for the various tenements, emergency services levy and legal costs pursuing the debt,” he said.
“The City has pursued debts through debt collection servicesand through further legal via the courts.”
The company has been suspended from trading since September last year.
