Acute scrutiny possible as polling firm phoenixes

The attitude of the ATO will be front of mind for B&T Advisory’s Travis Pullen as he delves into the circumstances preceding his appointment as liquidator of polling firm uCommunications Pty Ltd (uComms).

Pullen was appointed on April 16 via a resolution to voluntarily wind up the company moved by sole director and shareholder James Stewart.

In a report published this week, The Australian Financial Review (AFR) said the uComms brand and assets were transferred to a company called Yabbr prior to Pullen’s appointment.

According to the AFR Stewart said the transfer had gone through “due process”, presumably as per advice provided by ReGroup Solutions, an insolvency consulting firm he’d retained.

Stewart is the majority shareholder in Yabbr with 50 per cent. Other shareholders include Yabbr Chief Information Officer David Ertel, who was formerly with Equifax, which purchased another Stewart conceived entity – ReachTel – in 2016.

Stewart told the AFR that all employee entitlements had been paid but the article makes no reference to what price Yabbr paid for the assets and brand of uComms.

Given a statement of affairs lodged with ASIC shows uComms had $493.00 cash at bank at the time of Pullen’s appointment, that question will likely be occupying the mind of whichever case officer is responsible for recovering the $240,000 uComms owes to the ATO, a debt which positions the tax office in the familiar position of being the company’s largest unsecured creditor.

Pullen, who did not respond to questions prior to iNO’s deadline, will no doubt also be seeking an answer in respect of the consideration paid because that will assist in satisfying himself that the transfer was a perfectly legitimate phoenix transaction and not a creditor defeating disposition that might potentially be reversed. iNO makes no suggestion of wrongdoing.

According to Pullen’s DIRRI he received $8,000 up front from Stewart in respect of his fees and costs, which won’t go far towards funding any investigation into the transfer.

The DIRRI also indicates that the job was referred to him by ReGroup, which is headed by Ben Heaney and Michael Durbidge.

Heaney learned his craft as a pre-insolvency advisor at De Jonge Read and both men are founders, along with Eddie Griffith of the Association for Business Restructuring and Turnaround (the ABRT).

uComms clientele meanwhile has at times read like a list of the more prominent hard left activist organisations in Australia.

These include GetUp!, Greenpeace, Australian Youth Climate Coalition, The Australia Institute, and the Animal Justice Party.

We don’t know if Stewart shares such a distinct political inclination but it’s not unlikely given uComms was formerly owned by ACTU secretary Sally McManus and former CFMEU national secretary Michael O’Connor.

In 2019, after the ABC revealed the identities of uComms’ then owners, the executive editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age James Chessell confirmed he would no longer engage the firm to undertake polling and other analysis.

Two weeks before the Gladys Berejiklian-led Coalition was comfortably returned to Government in March 2019, the Sydney Morning Herald had carried a front page story based on exclusive uComms polling which forecast a Labor win.