The man who helped build Cairns into the booming tourism haven it is today, claims the Commonwealth Bank “unfairly” forced him to repay millions of dollars, destroying his business and livelihood.

Roy Lavis began one of northern Australia’s biggest construction businesses, the CEC group, in 1977.

Over three decades, Mr Lavis built Cairns – from the construction of major roads and suburbs, to building the iconic Cairns esplanade.

He told 60 Minutes reporter Ross Coulthart that the Commonwealth Bank “threw money at him”, encouraging him to expand the business.

“We were a property developer, we were a civil contractor and we were a construction material business,” Mr Lavis said .

“The proudest achievement is employing so many people in Cairns.”

In 2007, the Commonwealth Bank openly supported the business’ growth, offering a 60 per cent increase to Mr Lavis’ business loan to $161 million by the end of 2007.

The 70-year-old said that “vote of confidence” from the bank changed in the space of two months, as it demanded he repay $89 million.

“What happened?” Coulthart asked Mr Lavis .

“I don’t know. Overnight they wanted me to go to Brisbane. I went to Brisbane and in meeting they said ‘we want you to reduce debt’.

“They were saying if we don’t reduce a receiver would be brought in.”

Mr Lavis said the bank was asking him to halve his debt, despite offering him the $161 million loan.

He was forced to sell his waste management facility and concrete plant to keep up with paying off the debt and in May 2011, receivers were sent into the business.

“It just got to a point where the payments was squeezing the life blood out of the ability for the company to operate,” Mr Lavis said.

Australia’s Small Business Ombudsman Kate Carnell told 60 Minutes the bank did this because it believed construction in North Queensland was risky.

“Because there was a number of other cases in the same sort of industry that they wanted to reduce their risk ratios which reduced the cost of capital and Roy and others were collateral damage,” Ms Carnell said.

Ms Carnell said the move was unfair, as well as “unreasonable and unethical”, and could mean the bank acted illegally.

The Commonwealth Bank’s Chief Risk Officer David Cohen refutes claims the bank acted in this way, and said it’s “simply not true” the bank back-flipped on its agreement to provide a $160 million loan to Mr Lavis.

There are now calls for a bank tribunal to be established to look into the case.

“The banks do need to be held to account and if we can’t do that with a tribunal then the only other option is a Royal Commission,” Ms Carnell said.