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Another star witness at the Canberra Trade Union Royal Commission hearings has fallen from grace, fined thousands of dollars by the Federal Court for contravening workplace legislation. Formwork company boss Elias Taleb's evidence led to the blackmail conviction of corrupt former CFMU official Halafihi Kivalu. But now Mr Taleb, his firm Class 1 Form and his brother Tony have been hit with $20,000 in fines for obstructing union officials trying to get onto a building site in Canberra's north in 2015. The fines comes on top of $30,000 penalty imposed on Mr Taleb in January for under-paying his staff and he is due to front the federal court next month to explain why he has not repaid the ripped-off worker the $16,000 he is owed. News of the TURC witness's latest legal problems comes in the wake of the collapse of another Canberra building business owned by two other important witnesses in the Royal Commission's 2015 hearings. Capital Hydraulics and Drains, owned by Jo Lo Re and Nikki Lo Re, has been put into administration, owing up to $4 million all over town with up to 131 workers, other building trade companies and the Tax Office all looking for their money. People owed money by Capital will gather at the Ainslie Football Club at 11am on Friday to discuss the next steps. When the bosses of Capital were star witnesses in the Royal Commission in Canberra in 2015, they told the hearing there was "nothing more important than paying your staff". Mr Taleb's explosive evidence, delivered on the first day of hearings in 2015, exposed dodgy practices in parts of Canberra's construction industry. He detailed payments to a Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union ACT organiser, which led to the arrest and conviction for blackmail of Halafihi Kivalu. But two years later, the conviction of Kivalu remains the only successful prosecution to come out of the commission's high profile Canberra hearings. A high-profile criminal case against Construction Enerhy and Forestry Official Johnny Lomax, which relied on Kivalu's evidence, collapsed as did a Federal Court case against Mr Lomax and several other union officials including its ACT branch secretary Dean Hall. Federal police officers attached to the Royal Commission are now being sued by Mr Lomax over their conduct in the case. In the latest case against Class 1, Mr Taleb, his brother Tony and their company were ordered to pay a total of $20,000 to the union by April 5 for the blocking of access case and the CFMEU says the money has not been paid. The Federal Court imposed the latest fine after Mr Taleb admitted telling his brother Tony to bar the entry of three CFMEU officials from a site the company was working on in the Gungahlin suburb of Harrison in January 2015. The union officials were later found to have a legal right of entry and legitimate concerns with WorkSafe ACT suspending work on the site until safety upgrades were made. But the Talebs and the union agreed the workplace law breaches were at the lower end of the scale and agreed that each of the brothers should be fined $4000 and the company $12,000.

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