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"The grim reapers at the Australian Taxation Office in Northbridge are taking a hardline approach in their $100 million-plus rumble with property developer Allen Caratti. The reapers have not only called in the mates from the Australian Federal Police, they are going hard even where they&rsquo;ve agreed to hold fire while working out disputes over alleged tax debts. We say this after witnessing a couple of legal spats were the tax office has gone after Caratti while sorting out disputed company tax bills, including one $11 million tax bill dating back to 2014. Caratti has cried foul in the Federal Court in Sydney after the reapers hit him with an $1.15 million interest bill allegedly accrued since a ceasefire was signed in 2015. But the tax office has pushed ahead with the interest hit, pointing to a clause in its truce allowing it to pursue anything that is not the original $11 million &ldquo;taxation debt&rdquo; as defined in the pact. Tricky, you might say. But it has been enough to persuade Justice Alan Robertson that the tax office could go after the interest. He has sent the reaper and Caratti away to work out court orders that give effect to his judgment on the interest bill. CLOUGH SELL-OFF? Could venerable Perth engineering outfit Clough be on the verge of passing from South African ownership to German? It emerged this week that Germany&rsquo;s ATM Holding has acquired a 25 per cent stake in Murray &amp; Roberts, the Johannesburg-based parent of Clough. The move triggered speculation the family-owned ATM would launch a takeover with the aim of combining Murray &amp; Roberts with its own mining industry service provider. It came as the South African company posted a fairly ordinary set of half-year results, losing 60 million rand ($6 million). Clough saw its revenue sliced in half, and operating profit sank 62 per cent to 103 million rand. FEW WORDS Monadelphous boss Rob Velletri is not your typical, polished chief executive with all the jargon and slick responses at his fingertips. Asked by an analyst this week if he was surprised the engineering company had not fielded any takeover offers, Velletri said no. &ldquo;They can go for it if they like,&rdquo; he added. Velletri was pressed on the seeming injustice of that, given Monadelphous&rsquo; strong standing in the contracting world. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know, mate,&rdquo; was his response. &ldquo;No idea.&rdquo; FLY-IN DOCTOR Former Rio Tinto chief rock kicker and milk jug collector Sam Walsh has added another non-profit chairmanship to his portfolio, that of the Royal Flying Doctor Service in WA. Walsh will succeed Neville Bassett, who is hanging up his hat after 27 years on the board. The handover will happen in October. Walsh returned to Perth from London last year after retiring from Rio. His current gigs include the Art Gallery of WA, Perth Diocesan Trust, Australian Institute of Management, Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply and Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. Not much of a retirement, is it? MAKE OIL GREAT Woodside Petroleum&rsquo;s chief operations officer Mike Utsler, an American, wants Australia Oil and Gas Inc to go from being good, to great, to outstanding and then to being awesome. That&rsquo;s two steps beyond his fellow countryman President Donald Trump, who rather unambitiously just wants to Make America Great Again. It is not known if the desire to outdo the President is a result of any personal enmity, but Utsler did say he was a proud American until very recently, but now wants to be Canadian. He also said he regarded Australia as home now and might be here for the long term &mdash; a clear sign of a desire for awesomeness. Utsler spoke last week at the Australasian Oil and Gas Conference in Perth and urged the industry to collaborate to be competitive. He said a good idea today becomes an average idea tomorrow, but made no specific link to the actions of US voters. The Woodside operations boss said the first challenge for his industry was to speak with one voice. There was room for improvement, he said. &ldquo;As an industry we have forgotten the import of simple language,&rdquo; he said. Hear hear. KEEN ON QUINOA The trio of WA farmers who sell their home-grown quinoa through Coles were popping champagne corks this week after their grain was named Product of the Year 2017 in the Gluten Free Sides Category. Product of the Year is the world&rsquo;s biggest independent survey for product innovation, backed by 14,000 consumers. Narrogin farmer Ashley Wiese, along with colleagues Garren Knell and Megan Gooding, pioneered quinoa production in Narrogin following a $500,000 grant from the Coles Nurture Fund. Since the launch last April, Three Farmers has supplied Coles with more than 800,000 packets of white quinoa, producing 60 per cent on their own farms. With Neale Prior, Jenne Brammer and Peter Milne"
<https://thewest.com.au/business/reapers-wrangle-interest-rates-in-caratti-case-ng-b88396631z>