Controversial Aussie businessman wins appeal to visit Canada U.S.

Back in 2005, when today's Grade 1 pupils were newborns, Canada's childcare industry was braced for a hostile takeover by an ambitious Australian businessman named Eddy Groves and his hugely successful ABC Learning empire.

Then a high-profile, Ferrari-driving, Brisbane-based mega-millionaire ? still a Canadian citizen from his own childhood years in B.C. ? the 38-year-old Groves was one of Australia's richest men and the owner of a vast international network of childcare centres spanning Australia, New Zealand, Britain and the U.S.

Seven years on, his company in ruins and his Canadian passport at the centre of a legal drama that reached Australia's Court of Appeal last week, a 45-year-old Groves has finally won the right to new bail conditions ? despite facing criminal charges related to ABC's $1.6-billion collapse, and despite prosecutors' objections that he's a serious flight risk ? that will allow him to travel to this country to settle some business affairs before returning to face justice Down Under.

Groves, who reportedly owns properties in Nevada and Whistler, B.C., told media assembled outside a Brisbane courtroom on Friday that he intended to spend a "maximum of three weeks" in North America "to take care of a few things and then I'll be back."

But it was a hard-won victory for the fallen childcare king, who had surrendered his passport more than three years earlier. A judgment in his favour earlier this month at a state Supreme Court was appealed by Crown attorneys who are prosecuting Groves along with another former ABC Learning executive, Martin Kemp, for alleged illicit actions when the company began unraveling in 2008.

Prosecutor Michael Copley had stated there were no "compelling reasons" for Groves to go to North America, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

"He faces a serious charge with the possibility of jail time," Copley had argued. "He is a Canadian citizen. He has assets in Canada and the United States, and he has a bank account available to him in the state of Nevada . . . He's not your average Australian citizen."

But Groves' defence lawyer Peter Davis had countered that his client had "been kept here for three years," had a "genuine" need to travel to Canada and the U.S., and that there was no chance Groves would remain abroad to avoid his upcoming trial in Australia.

"He's been here since he was four years of age," Davis told the Herald. "All of his family is here and he's engaged in litigation here . . .It was always going to boil down to a contest between the right to travel and the risk of flight."

Groves, born in South Africa to Canadian parents, lived briefly in Victoria, B.C., as a youngster before his family moved to Australia.

In the 1980s, Groves and his wife started running a childcare business. Then, powered by subsidies introduced by the Australian government, Groves began acquiring and rebranding other daycares in Australia as part of his fast-growing ABC Learning Centres network.

International acquisitions followed, and by 2005 Groves owned a professional basketball team ? the Brisbane Bullets ? had acquired the media moniker "Fast Eddy" and had emerged as one of Australia's best-known businessmen.

That's when Groves seemed poised ? amid much fear and loathing among independent childcare providers and some social-service experts in Canada ? to launch an aggressive expansion of ABC's childcare chain in his former home country.

"It sounds like a great opportunity," he told a Toronto Star interviewer at the time. "What a great excuse to go back to that beautiful country that I love so much . . . There's something about Canada that Australia doesn't have. It would be great. A great opportunity."

Two years later, there were still rumblings of an imminent Canadian invasion by ABC Learning. Childcare operators in Toronto, Ottawa, Kingston, Calgary and elsewhere began receiving letters in the fall of 2007 from ABC-backed scouts making acquisition inquiries.

But by early 2008, the Aussie firm was teetering under a heavy debt load and lurching toward bankruptcy ? a spectacular fall that led, eventually, to a two-year criminal probe and ABC's breakup and sale by 2010.

? Copyright (c) Postmedia News

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