Terrey Hills Golf Club scores JobKeeper windfall as tax man tees off on billionaire owner

As billionaire developer Phillip Dong Fang Lee and his wife Xiaobei Shi were being assessed by the tax office last year amid what has amounted to a claim for $278 million, their Terrey Hills Golf and Country Club was pocketing more than $700,000 in JobKeeper benefits.

The federal government grant coincided with a bumper year for the exclusive club, whose total profit for 2020 was $2.9 million, compared with a loss of $3.72 million the previous year.

The club’s latest financial report also shows its revenue rose 1.99 per cent in the 12 months to early this year on the previous year, during which time the pandemic saw its operating expenses fall 8.35 per cent.

But less than six months after the club’s bumper results were collated for the financial regulator, the Federal Court has frozen it and other big-ticket assets owned or controlled by the Chinese-born couple.

The freeze orders apply to the couple’s $40 million Point Piper trophy home, Mandalay, as well as vast rural and bushland holdings on the Mid North Coast totalling about $50 million, a Bellevue Hill residence, thee Point Piper apartments, a Star Sydney casino account and a fleet of luxury cars including a Bentley, Rolls Royce Ghost and Porsche Cayenne.

Among the handful of companies included in the freeze orders is the Landmark Development and Finance Group company – of which Ms Shi is the sole director and owner – which has owned the Terrey Hills club since 2015.

Built in the early 1990s, the club featured what was then the first championship course built in Sydney for 20 years. It was opened amid much fanfare in 1994 by former Senator Bronwyn Bishop.

It was the first of its kind to offer corporate membership shares, and within a month of opening the limited corporate memberships jumped in price from $35,000 a year to $60,000. Mr Lee’s brother-in-law, Victor Lin, was soon after installed as chairman of the board.

However, the board was reshuffled last November after Mr Lin and another family member Ma Wanxin resigned, replaced by Ms Shi and her 20-year-old son Felix Lee.

The report notes Ms Shi “did not attend any directors’ meetings held during the financial year while she was director”.

Calls for comment from the club’s general manager, Shawn Mahoney, went unanswered this week.

Not all the family’s assets were included in the freeze orders, however. A house in Chatswood owned by Ms Shi for the past 20 years sold ahead of its scheduled auction on Saturday. It had a guide of $6.5 million.

Details of the tax dispute remain largely undisclosed, but court records indicate Mr Lee’s lawyers have lodged a challenge to shortfall interest charges of more than $35.77 million accrued on the alleged tax bill for the five years to June 2016. Included in those alleged shortfall interest charges is a claim for $21.5 million interest on the tax shortfall for the 2015 financial year alone.

The matter is set to be heard in the Federal Court by Justice Bromwich on December 3, when Mr Lee is expected to challenge the freeze orders.

The dispute has left some golf club members concerned the course will be left to degrade while it is tied up in a lengthy court dispute over the tax office claims.

Such concerns are shared by the Port Stephens neighbours to Mr Lee’s 400-hectare Fame Cove bushland property, where Land and Environment Court orders for remediation work to damaged bushland and a marine sanctuary has stalled, prompting MidCoast Council to warn that any delay may pose a threat to the water quality and health of the adjacent estuary and marine park.