![CPA Australia CEO Alex Malley left Macquarie University under a confidential deal with no finding of wrongdoing.](/content/dam/images/g/h/4/9/h/k/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.gv6nju.png/1490521964563.jpg)
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CPA Australia chief executive Alex Malley left Macquarie University in 2006 under a confidential settlement after the accounting lecturer was accused of serious misconduct.
The Associate Professor was allowed to resign without any finding of wrongdoing after allegedly directing hundreds of students each year to undertake paid tutorials through his wife's company, without Macquarie's knowledge. He also resigned mid-term (in June 2006) from his staff-elected position on the Council of Macquarie University, its highest governing body. The Council's members included then chancellor Maurice Newman and now-disgraced student union president Victor Ma.
Mr Malley was asked to explain student complaints that he was giving bonus marks in the university's first-year course, Accounting 101, to students who paid to complete private modules via Mrs Malley's website, Edextreme.
If proven, this would have been a prima facie breach of university policy and of the Commonwealth's Higher Education Funding Act, which proscribes auxiliary course-related charges (in addition to published fees) being imposed on students.
![Alex Malley was allowed to resign from Macquarie University in 2006.](/content/dam/images/g/g/u/x/k/y/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1490497966357.jpg)
Edextreme was registered in 2002 in the previous surname (Wilson) of Mr Malley's wife Rachel. Mrs Malley has used her married name in the couple's other publicly-available property and company filings.
Mrs Malley was a director, secretary and 50 per cent shareholder in Edextreme with Adelaide man John Lugg. The entity was registered to the residential address of Castle Cove accountant Anthony Protich. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission began strike-off proceedings against Edextreme in January 2007 and the company was formally deregistered in April 2007.
Mr Malley was a serving director of CPA Australia when he resigned his faculty position at Macquarie.
CPA is a professional standards membership organisation for accountants. Despite the abrupt end to Mr Malley's academic tenure, he was elected CPA's president fewer than 16 months later, on October 1, 2007. At that time, another Macquarie academic, Richard Petty, sat on the CPA board and its Nominations and Remuneration Committee. Professor Petty was the committee's chairman from 2010 to 2015. Graeme Wade, now chairman of the National Basketball League which CPA Australia pays $756,000 to sponsor, has been a CPA director since 2006 and sat on the Nominations and Remuneration committee in 2013, and from 2015 to the present day. He replaced Professor Petty as its chairman in 2016. Kerry Ryan has been a CPA director since 2007 and has sat on the Nominations and Remuneration Committee every year since, bar 2014.
Professor Petty, Mr Wade and Ms Ryan have been able to remain directors after CPA's constitution was changed in 2014 to extend their term limits to a maximum of 11 years.
CPA Australia and Mr Malley did not respond to specific questions put by The Australian Financial Review but their solicitor confirmed the existence of the deed of settlement between Mr Malley and Macquarie University. The solicitor also claimed the Financial Review's questions included "significant factual errors", that Mr Malley was unable to comment on due to confidentiality terms and that CPA and Mr Malley were in the process of commencing defamation proceedings against this newspaper.
A spokesperson for the university said that "as a matter of practice, Macquarie University does not comment on individual matters pertaining to current or former employees. Mr Malley's employment with Macquarie concluded more than 10 years ago, and there has been no relationship between the university and Mr Malley since that time. Macquarie University maintains the highest ethical standards in our approach to teaching and research."
Mr Malley was appointed CPA's chief executive in October 2009 and under his leadership the organisation has exponentially increased its membership, revenue and public visibility. His critics, whom include hundreds of disaffected members, are indignant at board oversight, governance standards and excessive expenditure on augmenting Mr Malley's public profile, but unrelated to the accounting profession.
After weeks of public scrutiny of the organisation's spending and secrecy, CPA last week called its 2017 Annual General Meeting in Singapore for April 27. The 75 per cent of its members based in Australia will be able to access proceedings via an online video stream. Questions to the board from members not in attendance must be submitted in advance. Just 5 per cent of CPA's members reside in Singapore.
CPA has also disabled the public "Find a CPA" function on its website, preventing disaffected members from organising against management and the board, but also obstructing a critical generator of business leads for its members.
"The information about members on our website is available for professional usage," CPA's chief operating officer – Member Services, Jeff Hughes, wrote to members on Friday, March 16, "but if this information is used incorrectly such as to build email distribution lists then we will take appropriate action".
CPA is an incorporated members' body whose stated vision is to be "known as… the world's best member service organisation."
Unlike listed companies whose governance and transparency it often critiques, CPA does not break out the individual remuneration of its directors or its executives (except, for the board, in 2008).
In 2007, CPA's volunteer board began drawing directors' fees for the first time, which have risen from $63,000 in 2008 (when Mr Malley was paid $168,000 as president) to around $100,000 annually in 2016. In 2014 and 2015, Mr Wade was paid in the vicinity of $400,000 to serve as president. Total remuneration for the board's 12 members, Mr Malley, Mr Hughes and CFO Adam Awty was $5.51 million in 2016, up from $4.57 million in 2015.
In 2016, Wade was replaced as president by University of Sydney deputy vice-chancellor Tyrone Carlin. Both Professor Carlin and Professor Petty were PhD students at Macquarie while Mr Malley was on faculty.
In addition to their paid positions at CPA Australia, Mr Malley, Professor Carlin, Professor Petty, Mr Wade, Mr Hughes and Mr Awty are all paid additionally as key management personnel of its new and fully-owned subsidiary CPA Australia Advice, which the parent loaned $5.6 million in 2016 to keep afloat.
Anthony Matis, the chief executive of Macquarie's student union under Mr Malley's fellow Macquarie University Council member Mr Ma, is now an executive at CPA Australia.