27 companies, a suspended prison sentence, and not a dollar paid back
A Melbourne finance company and its manager have been penalised nearly $280,000 for systematically exploiting vulnerable workers - the third time the pair have been dragged before the courts by Australia's workplace regulator.
The Federal Circuit and Family Court ordered ANSA Finance Pty Ltd to pay $233,100, and its manager to pay $46,620, on October 7, for breaches of the Fair Work Act 2009 that the court found were "serious, systematic and deliberate."
Neither showed up.
The company did not participate in the proceedings at all. On the morning of the penalty hearing in August, the manager emailed the court to say he would not be attending. No evidence, no submissions, no apology.
The case centred on three workers employed between late 2021 and mid-2022 under the Banking, Finance and Insurance Award 2020. Two were visa holders - one on a temporary graduate visa, the other on a student visa. The third was 20 years old.
Together, they were shortchanged $23,933.81. One worker lost $13,105.11, another $6,914.17, the third $2,606.95. The court noted that even smaller amounts were "far from trifling" for award-reliant workers. More than four years on, none of them had been paid.
The shortfalls covered minimum wages, annual leave, personal leave, public holidays, notice pay on termination, leave loading, and superannuation.
Then there was the retaliation.
One of the workers was sacked after making enquiries about his unpaid superannuation and requesting annual leave. The court called the firing "particularly egregious" given the worker was already being underpaid. He told the court he felt "very bad" when his job was terminated and that finding work during the COVID-19 pandemic was "really difficult" and a "very stressful time."
On top of the pay issues, ANSA Finance failed to give two of the workers any payslips at all, and refused to comply with a formal notice from the Fair Work Ombudsman to hand over employment documents - providing only a single employee details form despite repeated warnings and extra time.
What sharpened the penalty was the company's history.
ANSA Finance and its manager had already been penalised twice by the same court. In February 2024, penalties totalling $69,930 landed for failing to comply with compliance notices and failing to provide payslips. That same month, another $29,970 in penalties followed for a separate compliance notice breach. As at the date of the FWO's submissions in the current case, every dollar of those earlier penalties remained unpaid, and the company had not lifted a finger to comply with the underlying orders.
The manager's track record stretched well beyond workplace law.
In 2018, the Federal Court restrained him for ten years from operating a financial services business, dealing in financial products, or providing financial advice. In September 2023, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission banned him from engaging in credit activities. ANSA Finance voluntarily cancelled its Australian Credit Licence before a July 2025 Federal Court judgment in which the manager was convicted of 18 charges of contempt of court brought by ASIC - three of them for running a financial services business through ANSA Finance in deliberate defiance of the restraint order. The Federal Court found his conduct amounted to "very serious contempt of court" that was "deliberate and persistent" and carried out with "full knowledge of the prohibitions." He received a 12-month prison sentence, wholly suspended for two years.
Despite all of this, he remained an officeholder in five other corporations registered with ASIC at the time of the penalty hearing. Three of those appointments came after the current proceedings began. Over the past 28 years, he had held officeholder roles in 27 corporations.
The court accepted that there was "an appreciable risk" the respondents would offend again and noted the manager's "strong entrepreneurial bent" in finding the need for specific deterrence.
In setting penalties, the court departed from what the FWO had asked for - $303,030 against the company and $49,000 against the manager. The court lowered some individual penalty percentages but declined to apply a totality discount for either respondent, landing on $233,100 and $46,620 respectively.
The court also pushed back on the FWO's argument that no totality adjustment should apply to the company simply because it appeared unable to pay. That reasoning did not hold, the court said, because the company had never put any evidence of its financial position before the court - having chosen not to participate at all.
For HR teams, the practical takeaway is sharp: an adverse action claim does not need a large dollar figure to attract serious penalties. One worker's enquiry about unpaid super triggered the finding the court called "particularly egregious" - and the broader pattern of non-compliance compounded every individual penalty.
The penalties in this matter were ordered by the court. The respondents did not participate in the proceedings and have not filed any response or put forward any evidence.
