Gess Rambaldi.
If the Federal Court sequesters the estate of Jon Angelo George Adgemis later this month a tax office favourite will be installed as the debt-gorged high flier’s bankruptcy trustee.
After the ATO intervened last week in proceedings brought by Adgemis creditor Richard Gazal – allegedly owed $26 million – a consent to act as trustee was filed with the Federal Court on Monday.
iNO’s sources have advised that the consent was provided by Pitcher Partners’ Andrew Yeo who sometimes appears to be the only practitioner the tax office considers when it’s got a whale to fry.
Yeo along with colleague Gess Rambaldi were the ATO-funded appointees on the Armstrong and Shaw Group appointment, which exposed brazen levels of phoenixing and use of straw directors as the pair investigated a scheme estimated to have dudded the ATO and investors out of $100 million.
It was Yeo the ATO turned to as it seeks to clawback millions owed by bankrupt Romanian-based migration lawyer Florin Burhala, formerly of Melbourne.
And Yeo and Rambaldi’s tax office- funded pursuit of recoveries from the bankrupt estate of alleged money launderer Tom Karas is scarcely out of the news in gangland-fixated Melbourne.
More broadly Pitcher Partners has basked in the imprimatur of ATO preferencing, providing secondees to the ATO’s Significant Debt Management Division in Melbourne.
In 2019 iNO questioned the wisdom of the ATO seconding staff from an insolvency firm to a division that reviews indemnity funding applications submitted by Pitchers’ rivals.
Yesterday neither Yeo or Rambaldi would confirm they’d consented. Or deny it. Yeo didn’t reply to emails or texts.
We managed to get Rambaldi to pick up his phone but when asked the question, he said he would have to discuss any response he might make with Yeo first. These guys don’t do joint & several by halves.
iNO’s sources however are solid and Rambaldi’s refusal to deny that he’s provided a consent is not far short of confirmation.
A consent however is not an appointment and we’ll have to wait for the September 29 hearing of the ATO’s application to replace Gazal as petitioning creditor and for sequestration, assuming the substitution application succeeds.
We’ll also have to wait for the response to the ATO’s intervention from Adgemis’s controlling trustees at WLP Restructuring.
Scott Pascoe and Ben Ho can’t take legal advice in respect of their position or report to creditors their view on the ATO’s incursion until they’ve had a chance to consider the ATO’s submissions.
Those submissions reached the federal court file yesterday so the respective parties’ legal advisors will be sure to have them.
But given the controlling trustees are under fire for trying to get creditors to vote on Adgemis’s paltry Personal Insolvency Agreement (PIA) in circumstances where both the ATO and the Inspector General in Bankruptcy have questioned the adequacy of the trustees’ investigations, Pascoe and Ho will now have to wait for the outcome of next Monday’s hearing before knowing if they still have a position to consider.
If their consent is the consent relied upon by the party seeking the sequestration order the appointment of them is automatic upon the making of the order – absent any other action by the Court.