iNO’s colleagues in the mainstream press were all over the details of the first report of the bankrupt estate of Jon Adgemis after it was circulated to creditors by the failed hospitality tycoon’s trustee Andrew Yeo yesterday.
“I am not presently aware of the circumstances as to Mr Gazal being substituted by the DCT as the petitioning creditor. I have written to Mr Gazal to request details and am presently awaiting a response.” Pitcher Partners’ Andrew Yeo.
The towering piles of private credit debt teetering on equity quicksand, the spiv’s wet dream luxury car fleet, the torrents of borrowings topping up the AMEX and keeping the yacht afloat, even the safety deposit box containing a gold necklace Yeo graciously offered to sell back to Adgemis’s mother.
There was enough grist to feed an industrial park of gossip mills, but iNO’s focus was elsewhere.
Yeo’s correspondence with creditors didn’t stop at his first report. Also attached was his proposal for approval of payment of almost $150,000 in remuneration for work performed by himself and his staff from the date of his appointment on October 3 to November 9.
At more than $20,000 a week Yeo will be happy that it was the deep pocketed ATO that sought his consent to act because the costly and exhaustive investigations his team will have to undertake are unlikely to generate returns sufficient to cover his own remuneration and expenses, let alone fund a dividend for creditors.
Indeed, such is the scale of Adgemis’s profligacy that even WLP Restructuring’s Scott Pascoe and Ben Ho, who in June made the ill-fated decision to act as Adgemis’s controlling trustees in anticipation of Adgemis putting up a Personal Insolvency Agreement (PIA), may find their lien for remuneration and expenses proves worthless.
The former controlling trustees’ claim came to light in another of the attachments Yeo distributed to yesterday, that being a notice to creditors of a proposed resolution to be put to Adgemis’s creditors on Pascoe and Ho’s behalf.
“That the remuneration of the Controlling Trustees of the Jon Angelo George Adgemis from 20 June 2025 to 3 October 2025 is determined at a sum equal to the cost of time spent by the controlling Trustees and the Controlling Trustees’ partners and staff, calculated at the hourly rates as detailed in the Initial Remuneration Notice dated 18 July 2025 and such sum to be capped at the amount of $500,000 exclusive of GST, and that the Controlling Trustees may draw on the remuneration on a monthly basis or as required.”
Obviously it’s a resolution that could benefit from amendment but the clock is ticking, with creditors asked to return the forms by December 12.
The remuneration resolutions however weren’t all that was interesting. In his report Yeo recounted multiple instances of inquiries having been made where responses were yet to be received, but the oddest inquiry related to his referrer the Deputy Commissioner of Taxation (DCT).
On page nine of the report Yeo explains to creditors how the DCT became the petitioning creditor in the sequestration application that ultimately saw Adgemis bankrupted on October 3 after the DCT substituted in for Monaco-based reg trader Richard Gazal.
Gazal had issued Adgemis with a demand and then a bankruptcy notice in 2024 in relation to a debt of more than $25 million.
In his report Yeo said “On September 29, 2025 the DCT was substituted as the applicant on the creditor’s petition. The debt owed by the bankrupt to the DCT totalled $161,925,716.
“I am not presently aware of the circumstances as to Mr Gazal being substituted by the DCT as the petitioning creditor. I have written to Mr Gazal to request details and am presently awaiting a response,” Yeo concluded.
Well iNO is not presently aware of what reason would be stopping Yeo from asking the DCT the same question. Or why he didn’t ask that question when the DCT first approached him for a consent?
If it occurred to us, why not this highly regarded insolvency practitioner and one of the DCT’s go to appointees?
Naturally we asked Yeo. iNO is presently awaiting a response.
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