How ANZ helped the Oswals set up in a ‘$314m’ Swiss palace

The Oswals later claimed the receivers, PPB, had sold the business too cheaply at $580 million. It triggered explosive legal claims that dragged through the courts for years before new ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott signed off on a confidential settlement in 2016.

But the leaked documents, obtained by The Australian Financial Review in the Cyprus Confidential project with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and Germany’s Paper Trail Media, confirm payouts and tax dealings in the peace deal. The documents further detail revival plans and compliance setbacks for the couple as they proposed new ventures in Cyprus.

ANZ had lent more than $1.3 billion since 2005 for the Oswals’ ventures in Australia.

But after the receivers sold the plant’s shares for hundreds of millions of dollars, the Oswals claimed this was not enough. In the ensuing shower of litigation, allegations against ANZ included racial bigotry and that at one stage an ANZ executive had put Mr Oswal in a headlock.

ANZ rejected allegations against staff and many other legal claims. Still, in 2016, the bank settled the Oswal dispute, announcing this was the “right decision for shareholders bearing in mind the residual risks in a case of this size and complexity”.

Estimates of the confidential payout went as high as $200 million. ANZ said it had recovered loans but would book an “additional provision charge” of $145 million. A provision can cover elements such as legal costs – which were substantial – and payouts.

The Oswals, meanwhile, were facing pressure, with court documents showing the Australian Taxation Office claimed Mr Oswal in 2016 owed $6.3 million and Mrs Oswal $186 million.

Now, settlement details have emerged because the couple, based in Dubai by 2017, used a representative to contact a Cyprus legal and corporate consultancy, ConnectedSky, about creating local companies.

Those companies would need a bank account. That triggered compliance headaches.

A ConnectedSky employee told a staffer at a Cyprus bank the Oswals were the ultimate beneficial owners of the proposed Cyprus company, and their wealth was $US100 million ($130 million then). The wealth’s source was inheritance, savings, “funds received by the deed of settlement” with ANZ, and profits or dividends.

The Cypriot bank wanted more detail. Eventually, the settlement deed between ANZ and the Oswals was sent, although the total sum was redacted. Still, the deed noted two payments.

One payment was a bank cheque from ANZ to the Commissioner of Taxation for a redacted “ATO Sum”.

It suggests ANZ helped pay the Oswals’ tax debts; leaked letters show the day before ANZ announced reaching a settlement confidentially, the ATO confirmed to Mr and Mrs Oswal having received the “final payment in respect of your amended tax assessments”.

The deed’s second payment was to Dubai-based Mercury Services, a company associated with the Oswals. ANZ was to send a SWIFT banking message saying its payment of $US125,863,997.29 (roughly $169 million at the time) to Mercury Services “represents proceeds of settlement paid by ANZ in relation to certain legal claims”.

The Oswals’ representative said in an August 2017 email that Mercury Services “belongs to the Oswals”. The settlement funds would be the source of money “for the refinery project with the balance coming in as debt”, he said.

Mercury Services had featured in earlier Australian disputes, although Mrs Oswal’s brother was listed in court filings then as its sole shareholder. Mrs Oswal was found in a 2016 ruling to have “intended to defraud not merely the ANZ but her creditors generally” in a Federal Court civil case where the ATO successfully claimed a mortgage she granted to Mercury Services over property in Australia should be declared void.

By September 2017, the founder of ConnectedSky, the Cypriot business agency, pressed the Bank of Cyprus to open an account for the Oswals’ proposed company, telling the bank the couple was “very well known to me personally”.

“They have indeed provided all possible information,” he wrote. “We kindly ask you to speed up the decision as we do not want our client to search for other options since we have invested significant time.”

ConnectedSky also told the Oswals’ representative that the bank’s delays could be linked to the couple being “high-profile individuals with a public track record”.

“As such, banks (due to increasing regulations) have become more demanding when it comes to the declarations of the source of funds.”

More documentation was provided for the bank, the couple obtained Cyprus passports under a national investor scheme, and their Cyprus company was registered in 2017. But a plan for a 10,000 barrel per day crude oil processing facility appears to have not taken off and steps were taken in 2019 to strike off the company.

The Oswal Group Global since then has two active websites, for bauxite miner Axis Mineral Resources and ethanol venture Pro Industries, both in Africa.

Those sites claim the group has “operations in mining, petrochemicals, real estate and agriculture across Africa, India, Australia and Switzerland”.

ANZ and the ATO declined to comment. The Oswals did not respond to queries sent via the family’s two active companies.

But the couple and their two daughters captured glamour headlines again in India-linked media this year – after renovating a Swiss villa once owned by Greek heiress Christina Onassis.

The residence boasts “champagne leaf screens, stunning tiki mirror panels and exquisite marble work”. According to Hello! India, the “Oswals balance their indulgent lifestyles, filled with private jets and luxury sports cars, by giving back in the same measure to society”.

One daughter, Vasundhara Oswal, who works at the ethanol project, on Instagram in July praised that article, hit out at Australian racism and said media there can “sometimes manipulate things like ‘Taj on Swan’ (which btw was not nicknamed by us), the locals named it”.

That planned $70 million Perth mansion, with seven domes, was ultimately never completed. But Vasundhara flagged a comeback.

“Sometimes when things don’t work out the first time round – it’s so that they can come back bigger and better and permanent! Our home in Switzerland is an exact representation of that … 10 times bigger than what we were building in Australia,” she wrote.