The Australian company which ran the Bibby Stockholm asylum-seeker barge in Dorset has started repaying some of the £80 million it overcharged UK clients, including the British government.
Corporate Travel Management (CTM) has been in a trading halt on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) since August after financial irregularities were discovered in the company’s UK accounts.
KPMG is completing an audit into CTM’s UK operations to determine the total amount owed to clients, including government departments.
The Cabinet Office, which has awarded £99.5 million in contracts to CTM over the past decade, has confirmed that the Australian travel company had refunded some of the overcharged money.
It is understood CTM made the first refund to the Cabinet Office in December, and the company is working with the Crown Commercial Service and Government Commercial Function.
The total amount so far repaid to the UK government, or how much is still owed, has not been revealed.
But analysts have questioned the ability of CTM to repay its debts given that it only has A$148 million (£77 million) in cash assets and it has still not released its 2025 fiscal accounts or announced when its stock will be traded again on the ASX.
The company had previously warned that the total amount due to UK clients could exceed £80 million but has yet to confirm any repayments in updates to the market.
CTM is a major player in the corporate travel market in the UK but also won contracts for hotel quarantine during the Covid pandemic and accommodation for asylum seekers.
This year The Times revealed that CTM had won £3.9 billion in public sector contracts over the past ten years.
The biggest UK government client was the Home Office, which awarded nine contracts worth £2.4 billion, including a £1.6 billion contract for the Bibby Stockholm asylum seeker barge which was scrapped by Labour in 2024.
Other big government clients for CTM included the Scottish government (seven contracts worth £421.9 million), the Department for Work and Pensions (six contracts worth £209 million), the Ministry of Defence (£190 million) and the Environment Agency (£100 million).
The Home Office said an internal review into CTM contracts was still being undertaken. “All taxpayer money owed will be recovered,” it said.
The CTM financial scandal has already claimed Michael Healy, the UK and European chief executive, who was sacked in December last year for alleged “breach of his contractual obligations”.
At the start of February CTM announced that Jamie Pherous, its founder and chief executive, had “retired”, but he would remain as a consultant for the next six months.