Is it possible to lose track of AU$7.8 million in wages?
In his first TV appearance since the news emerged that he had underpaid 515 employees across his restaurant group, Australian chef and TV celebrity George Calombaris described the moment he and his business partners realised what had happened.
The chef, whose company, MAdE, currently employs 642 people, told ABC's 7:30 host Leigh Sales that the incident was a terrible mistake, which he and his team owned up to as soon as they became aware of it.
An innocent mistake?
"The thing that I need to say is, in 2017, we found the problem, we self-reported," he said. "We went to Fair Work, we owned up, and two years ago we paid back everyone."
Despite trying to protect his intentions, the chef said his employees were "everything" to him.
“I’m not here to blame anyone. I take full responsibility for this. I’m sorry.”
He explained that it happened as a result of a rapidly expanding restaurant empire, with little to no financial oversight.
"The thing about 13 years ago, you're a young chef, 26 years of age, you want to open your first restaurant, you get together with three other partners at that point, and you open the first one, then the second one opens, the third one, the creativity is flying, the ideas are flying, the dreaming is there."
"You're running a million miles an hour being creative, being someone that can inspire the team with food that you're cooking and you assume that in the back end things are happening at the same speed, but they weren't."
"But the sophistication in the back end wasn't there."
"There
