Daniel Grollo is a liar and a thief. In the last two years, his construction company has conned workers out of hundreds of thousands in wages. The scam?

Grocon understates the value of its projects to avoid paying its workers the site allowances they’re entitled to. It does this knowingly and more often than is reasonable to claim as a mistake. In 2012 it undervalued a major housing and retail project in Melbourne’s western suburbs by $270 million, and last year the Myer Emporium shopping centre site in the CBD by about $210 million (as determined by the Victorian Building Industry Disputes Panel, which assessed both cases).

Grollo, the sole owner of the Grocon empire, has never been penalised over the frauds. Grocon sites and offices aren’t overrun with inspectors from the building industry regulator scrambling to get a look at the books. The federal and state governments’ familiar huffing and puffing about illegality in the building industry is replaced with silence.

The only reason the deception is picked up at all is because, usually, the construction workers’ union, the CFMEU, steps in. After a dispute, Grocon has to pay back the stolen wages – workers’ money that’s sat in Grollo’s fat bank account for months.

It’s a crime in anyone’s book, even the bosses’. But Grollo’s crimes barely make it into the papers, let alone into a court. Instead, the Fair Work building commission (Fair Work Building and Construction – FWBC) is currently pursuing eight separate cases against the CFMEU.

Its website boasts of each penalty secured – $5,000 for an organiser who called a foreman a “fuckwit, deadbeat or dickhead” (apparently it wasn’t settled which); $193,000 for the union and an official who organised a stop work meeting to discuss safety concerns and the underpayment of Chinese workers on an iron ore project in the Pilbara; $1,068,000 for 117 construction workers who took part in a strike for redundancy payments and re-employment – and so it goes on.

“On my watch there will be little tolerance for those who do not respect the rule of law on Australia’s construction sites”, says the head union hunter and director of FWBC, Nigel Hadgkiss. On this point Hadgkiss is no hypocrite. The rule of law on construction sites, as in warehouses, factories and offices across the country, has only one meaning: the right to make a profit and hold on to it.

Following the rules has nothing to do with it.

Follow Steph on Twitter @steph__price