Australia's biggest construction company, CIMIC, stands accused of not paying hundreds of millions of dollars to workers, subcontractors and banks in its Middle East operations in a scandal that has been described as a humanitarian disaster.Hundreds of workers have been left stranded and unpaid after CIMIC announced the sale of its Middle East arm a year agoTheir major shareholder, ACS, has recently proposed a $1.
Over the years, the media-shy organisation has been caught up in a series of high-profile international bribery and corruption scandals, corporate governance issues and shareholder class actions."The situation is a humanitarian disaster," says Fatima Almass Al-Hamad, a judicial guard in Qatar, who was appointed by the court as an administrator of the Qatar business, Leighton Contractors Qatar, which was owned by CIMIC and a local partner.
Australian Michael Albrecht has worked for the CIMIC group of companies for 17 years and is currently stuck in the Middle East.