Sanjeev Gupta's final InfraBuild sleight

Whyalla has been liberated from the yoke of international steel shyster Sanjeev Gupta. For perfectly understandable reasons, politicians and the public are fixated by the Great Reveal of the recovery process, as administrator KordaMentha quantifies the damage wrought to the steelworks, its local suppliers and the town.

As necessary as that all may be, it serves as the perfect distraction from the predictable fact that elsewhere, Gupta is attempting to bring off yet another financial heist.

The GFG (Gupta Family Group) Alliance is now a global spiderweb of worthless businesses in various stages of insolvency or wind-up. The only remaining asset of any material value is InfraBuild, a house of "good" Australian steel assets. Of course, even InfraBuild's value is not what it once was. There is undoubtedly significant latent value in InfraBuild but it is now loss-making and battling just to service its own $1.1 billion of debt. Its directors have now invoked safe harbour protections as the company teeters on the brink of insolvency. This is what happens to virtually every company Gupta owns, as he starves them of maintenance capital and strips them of cash either to stave off the collapse of his other companies or to milk them for his own benefit.[[In the financial years 2022-2024, InfraBuild paid $76 million to other GFG companies under a "corporate services agreement" and in FY24 wrote off $56 million of bad debts to Gupta's failed business in the Czech Republic. Also in FY24, InfraBuild loaned Gupta $10 million personally, then retrospectively reclassified $5.7 million of this amount as a "corporate expense" as determined by an unidentified "external expert". Gupta has repaid $600,000 of the principal but still owes InfraBuild $3.7 million. InfraBuild has even paid rent to Gupta to use his Potts Point mansion, Bomerah.]]