The corporate watchdog is investigating what happened to $75 million of an ASX-listed company’s cash. At the centre of the investigation are two men – a gangland lawyer and a charming tech executive.
Lawyer Mark Madafferi looks like a man under pressure as he walks into the North Melbourne office of his law firm Christopher William Legal, which has served some of Australia’s most infamous criminals and underworld associates.
But the company’s recently sacked CEO Steve McGovern – a typical sneaker-wearing “tech bro” in his late 50s with a disarming Manchester brogue – is also under investigation by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission .The regulator and the company allege that vast sums of Dubber’s cash – raised from shareholders around Australia – was used between 2018 and 2024 to provide short-term loans to Madafferi’s often colourful clients.
This masthead is not suggesting the ASIC and Dubber investigation indicates any wrongdoing by Madafferi or McGovern, just that the inquiry is occurring. It is also not clear what representations McGovern made to Madafferi. Madafferi has also represented less well-known clients from all walks of life, including divorcees, small business owners and businesspeople including McGovern. He even represented a private lender at the High Court of Australia against allegations of unconscionable conduct. While Madafferi’s client lost the case, it was a feather in the cap of the suburban solicitor.
He then branched into internet and telco businesses as the dot-com boom took off, including as chief executive of the My1300 Group and an executive at Benchmark Sales and Affinity Telecoms.In 2011, McGovern struck gold with Dubber. The low-cost cloud recording technology provider and data harvester would go on to list on the ASX in 2015 and pick up clients that included some of the world’s most notable telco companies: Optus, AT&T, Telstra, Cisco and Microsoft.
“He was just a lovely guy to work for and with. He was a really kind, caring, empathetic, tough but fair leader,” said one former executive, who left the company over leadership concerns unrelated to McGovern. Another former employee who worked closely with McGovern was equally floored about the allegations: “The man I knew would never steal.”
Within four years, the group listed on the ASX, but it wasn’t long before an event happened that, if publicly known, would have tarnished the group’s reputation. Campion told this masthead he has put the matter behind him and that court records showed he never devised or knowingly assisted the fraud, but his attempts to report the matter to his superiors were seen as inadequate by US authorities.
The corporate watchdog is expected to conduct interviews with key personnel as part of its investigation, according to another source familiar with the interview process but not permitted to speak on the record.
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