A bankrupt and failed pyramid schemer’s alter of Australian ice hockey has come to a rapidly discontinue thanks to an investigation in Michael West Media. Sandi Logan reviews.
Readers might perchance well prefer nearly a month within the past we reported the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) had been requested to analyze how a bankrupt and failed pyramid schemer who fled Canada in 2017 used to be now in alter of Australia’s limited amateur federation controlling the game of ice hockey.
In September 2021, Grove Bennett used to be appointed a director of the public firm Ice Hockey Australia (IHA), after which its president. All in two days.
Effectively, since our file and diverse media enquiries following up Michael West Media, IHA supplied on Might presumably well 5 its president and board member, Grove Bennett had stepped down.
Skating on skinny ice: the hologram man who took over an Australian carrying code
“It used to be a privilege to lend a hand as President of IHA but with the anticipated boost of our men’s and women’s capabilities, the inclusion of our para program and extra and extra better responsibility with overlapping capabilities, its (sic) time for a brand amassed leader to manual hockey thru its subsequent appealing chapter,” acknowledged Bennett – barely seven months after being appointed to the feature – in a resignation statement posted to Facebook (but no longer to the IHA web procedure).
“I prefer IHA the general most effective and thank the organisation for the different to work in a single amongst Australia’s most smartly-appreciated frigid climate sports, and which has been a lifelong passion for me.”
A amassed icing
Very without problems, the IHA statement no longer eminent the groundswell of subject amongst tell ice hockey associations regarding Bennett’s financial mismanagement of a chain of Canadian corporations which sent him bankrupt in 2020 with liabilities of better than $3 million.
Bennett’s dark profession course to the leadership of the 5000-member, century-primitive Australian ice hockey organisation also integrated fleeing Toronto in 2017 when his bank commenced litigation over a overall safety settlement which amounted to a debt of better than $CAD1.25M. The Toronto-Dominion Bank had suspended Bennett’s firm’s credit facility in 2016 on fable of of a borrowing inappropriate shortfall.
In its courtroom filings, the bank also alleged financial files supplied by Bennett used to be ‘deceptive’, ‘false’ and ‘negligently misrepresented’, and extra alleged Bennett well-liked ‘funds that had been no longer bona fide obligations’ of the firm and that he had been ‘unjustly enriched to the detriment of the bank’.
A decided board
Adrian Miller, who resigned from the IHA board in February over serious governance and ethics considerations regarding the board’s ‘coping with’ of its president’s financial fable, acknowledged as of late he used to be no longer impressed with the board’s response.
“I negate we can all query thru this for what it is: a decided board attempting to vindicate its earlier choices to nominate Grove Bennett as CEO/MD/GM,” acknowledged Miller, a Canberra public servant and lawyer-in-coaching in a Facebook statement. “We had already made a mistake in being fooled in his appointment onto the board; we wouldn’t be making that mistake again.”
Miller believes the broader Australian ice hockey community now desires to step up. “To my ice hockey visitors I deliver this: you should gain in and wait on at your local level,” he acknowledged. “For these that can have skilled abilities that would complement the administration of the game, I implore you to be enthusiastic,” he added.
The final straw for Bennett and the board looks to have been latest reviews about moves under device so that you simply might perchance well add an extra member to a national team’s contingent for its European race to world championships in a week’s time.
It looks unbeknown to the board, Bennett had been negotiating to enroll within the girls’s team travelling to Zagreb on Might presumably well 13 to “oversight a national team’s operations, and be taught the chef de mission’s feature”. Group people and officers rebelled, and leaks began to feed into the sturdy anti-Bennett sentiment breaking thru the ice in every tell and the ACT.
Air swing
A separate IHA statement as of late condemned “repeated representations made on social media and in diverse public kinds…which devour unfavorable, false, deceptive and adversarial representations about IHA, Grove Bennett, and diverse IHA administrators”.
“The board considers the criticisms of Bennett and its failure to undertake the due diligence anticipated when a public firm appoints administrators, to be “public harassment and assaults”.
The board has overlooked the purpose entirely, and as a replace is now purchasing for programs to account for its tell of no activity and dysfunction. It each and each sees the writing on the wall, and might perchance well well hear the crowd baying for its elimination.
“To again turnover a brand amassed board of IHA after this type of transient period will handiest gain rid of the particular progress that has been made,” in response to the IHA on its Facebook web page. “This…will not be any longer within the preferrred interests of the organisation and its reason.”
The member associations from Queensland, NSW, ACT, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia will in some device invent that call when they subsequent meet: both at a various overall assembly convened to steal the board, or at its subsequent annual overall assembly.
Readers of our accepted file would also prefer MWM sent inquiries to Grove Bennett but bought no response sooner than publishing our accepted chronicle on 8 April. Neither the IHA nor Grove Bennett have replied to those questions a month later.
Digital shepherding
All thru our investigations into Bennett, his tennis academy web procedure used to be both pulled down or by some capability disconnected from the rep. It later reappeared with modified text round his accepted claims – which had been challenged and stumbled on to be attempting – about his tennis and ice hockey background.
“Criticism plot nothing when your factual compass is decided to factual north,” says Adrian Miller, now encourage coaching juniors at his local Canberra ice rink.
It’s time for IHA people, member states and supporters to position together a sturdy, dedicated, ethical and precisely representative board to prefer over IHA’s latest tell of despair.
The claims by IHA vice president Ryan O’Handley that Bennett’s ‘indisposition’ used to be “appropriate noise and would omit” is yet one other instance of the board’s head-in-the-sand device.
Come by up and smell the espresso.