Payne's Properties (1958–62) Reid Murray Group (1959–62) Adams Group (1973–93)
Criminal charges
Fraud
Criminal penalty
9-year sentence (5 years served)
Spouse
Ruby Adams (m. 1952)
Children
1
Maltese businessman
Raymond Lawrence Adolf Borg (born 14 October 1930) was a Maltese businessman active in Australia and Canada during the second half of the 20th Century.
His career became embroiled in major corporate scandals beginning in the early 1960s, playing a key role in one of the largest corporate bankruptcy in Australian history.
After serving time in prison for fraud, he fled with Ruby to Toronto and later built up North America's largest medical waste incineration and transportation company. His whereabouts beyond 1993 are unclear.
Biography
Early life
Raymond Borg was born on 14 October 1930 in the Egyptian capital city of Cairo, but soon went back to his family's home country of Malta. Borg met his future wife, Ruby Argyro Adams, in 1949 and they soon convinced their parents to emigrate to Australia. "I thought Australia had the brightest future of any country" Borg said.[1]
Arriving in Sydney, they went sightseeing around the country before eventually settling in Melbourne. He had originally applied for part-time cleaner work at the Paynes Bon Marche department store, but was rejected because he didn't have enough experience. Borg soon became a clerk at Victorian Railways, studying accounting on the side.[1]
Realestate career
In early 1952, he acquired his first of many properties – a decrepit Victorian terrace at 31 Gladstone Street in Caulfield North. After gaining more practical experience, Borg returned to the Paynes department store to apply for a job canvassing television sets and manchester goods. Borg excelled at his job, and was soon noticed by store managers and later company directors.[2]
Borg (second from left) with model of proposed shopping centre, 1959
He spent subsequent years ascending the corporate ladder, and in late 1958, joined forces with parent company Reid Murray Holdings to create a realestate division called Paynes Properties. The move was in line with the group's recent diversification into the property field – developing homes, units, and shopping centres to fuel the post-war population increase.[3]
Report by Reid Murray, 1959
In May 1959, Borg became the youngest executive in the Reid Murray group of companies, which was one of Australia’s largest conglomerates at the time. Some of the first projects carried out under his watch include a 200-lot subdivision in Metung on the Gippsland Lakes and two smaller developments Burwood and Glen Waverley.[4][5] Borg Crescent, a suburban street in Scoresby, was named after him and forms part of the 155-lot Mountain View estate.[6]
Raymond Borg (far-right) at a Reid Murray board meeting, 1959
In early 1959, Paynes Properties secured a controlling interest in the proposed £6m Forest Hills Shopping Centre, which became a joint venture with Paul Fayman and his consortium of investors. However, the ambitious venture soon fell to pieces after a credit squeeze which left its core directors in financial turmoil, ultimately forcing Paynes to withdraw completely. The centre eventually opened under mostly-new ownership in June 1964.[4]
Another notable failed venture associated with Borg and Fayman's consortium was the ambitious "Australialand" proposal in 1960, which was announced just months before the stock market crashed. The partnership had purchased a large tract of land at Laverton and attempted to establish an Australian version of Disneyland, but were issued a stern infringement warning from Walt Disney's associates. This, coupled with the ongoing financial crisis, lead to the abandonment of the project.[7]
Yet another unsuccessful proposal from this era was the proposed "Sunbury Satellite Town" scheme, which proposed the development of over 10,000 homes in the western parts of Sunbury. In total, only around 170 residential lots were sold before the development collapsed.[8]
Fraud investigation and criminal trial
Reid Murray board of directors, 1960
By mid-1963 the Reid Murray group was collapsing under a debt of some £25.8 million (equivalent to $283.5m in 2025) – in what one journalist described as the longest corporate receivership of its time.[9] Government auditors and royal commissions scrutinised the company's accounts, finding many unusual and suspicious transactions. For example, the official auditors reported that some £1.65 million of instalment debts had been sold off as loans, with the £657,139 discount on these deals omitted from the book.[10]
They noted a suspiciously dated sale document that had been back-dated to inflate profits, and “loan” advances to enable directors to buy company shares. In particular, auditors recorded that Payne’s Properties had made unsecured loans to a private firm, whose directors and principal shareholders were revealed to be Borg and his wife. Many of these intra-group loans (over £100,000 to directors) appeared in breach of company law and possibly “irrecoverable”.[10]
By late 1963, the Victorian Government had formally commissioned investigators to probe the Reid-Murray collapse. Their report, tabled in Parliament, bluntly accused Borg of using his control of Payne’s Properties to fabricate profits and divert company funds for his family’s benefit. Inspectors calculated that “Borg interests received in cash from Federated Pays Group funds in excess of £70,000".[11]
They found that Borg had directed “a series of dealings primarily designed to produce fictitious profits,” falsifying the accounts to cover short. In one scheme, Payne’s Properties paid an excessive price to acquire the Louisiana group of companies from Borg’s relatives, effectively transferring about £150,000 of group assets to Borg interests with little real consideration.[11]
The investigations led to criminal charges. In 1965 Borg went on trial in Melbourne’s Supreme Court. A jury found him guilty on multiple counts: four counts of fraudulently misapplying cheques (totalling about £20,000) and one count of forging a sales agreement. A judge sentenced him to nine years’ imprisonment with hard labour, specifying a minimum of six years before parole.[12]
The court also permanently disqualified Borg from holding an estate agent’s licence. He received nine-years in Melbourne’s Pentridge Prison, but served a minimum sentence of five years before release. He told the Bankruptcy Court in 1966: "Being in gaol is a tremendous shock. You can survive only by forgetting the past and not thinking about the future".[12]
While Borg served his sentence, other related matters made headlines. Press reports of the era noted financial difficulties for his family: newspapers claimed his parents Alfred and Louise Borg had incurred a large tax assessment (about £116,000) and that their Pascoe Vale home was robbed of £9,000, leading Borg to offer a £3,000 reward for information. In one court hearing, a witness even alleged Borg had threatened to have him knifed if he testified. These accounts appeared in the contemporary press, although they were not central to the official findings.[13]
Career in North America
After his release from prison, Borg vanished from the Australian business scene. He would later re-emerged in North America under the assumed name Ray Adams.[14] He then built a successful career in the private healthcare sector – notably by the late 1970s he was known as the owner of Decom Medical Waste Systems, which controversially operated incinerators in the both United States and Canada.[15] A 1977 Toronto Globe and Mail investigation finally exposed his past: after a year-long probe reporters confirmed that Ray Adams was in fact Raymond Lawrence Adolf Borg.[16] The Globe reported that Borg/Adams had immigrated to Canada in 1973 under a false identity, denying his criminal history.[17] Following several high-profile lawsuits in the late 1980 and early '90s, Borg disappeared from the public eye once again and is believed to have fled to Tunisia.[9]
Gallery
Newspaper clipping, June 1959
An "X-Ray Home" on display by Paynes at their Burwood estate, 1959
Announcement of the Forest Hill Shopping Centre, 1959
Homes by Paynes at Mahoneys Road in Forest Hill, 1960
Borg leaving the Supreme Court, 1965
References
1 2 "Now, at 28, he's a director". The Herald. 4 June 1959.
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