Secured creditor’s claim imperils liquidator’s lien

Three weeks ago at a meeting of PMH Manufacturing Pty Ltd (PMH) creditors a resolution went through approving remuneration for the company’s sole liquidator, Jason Tang.

On Monday the company’s largest secured creditor obtained a date to hear its application for orders requiring Tang to account for the securing, preserving and realising the assets of the company.

When the parties assemble before Justice Ashley Black of the NSW Supreme Court on November 9 the secured creditor will attempt to show Tang’s accounting falls short of what he needs to justify his remuneration claim and his underlying lien. Tang will seek to demonstrate the opposite.

What makes this application interesting is that the secured creditor is Fifteen Investments Pty Ltd (FIPL), a part of the NPC Pooled Group which perpetrated a multi-million dollar Pay As You Go (PAYG) labour hire scam allegedly orchestrated by former Sydney insolvency practitioner Sam Henderson prior to his death in April, 2023.

FIPL and the NPC Pooled Group are under the control of liquidator Darren Vardy, who’s being funded by the ATO to investigate the Group’s affairs, pursue recoveries and wind up the alleged scheme.

At a meeting of PMH creditors weeks before Henderson’s death Tang confirmed FIPL was admitted as a first-ranking ALLPAP secured creditor in the amount of $910,000.

He told the meeting funds totalling between $450,000 and $500,000 would be distributed to FIPL from the proceeds of fixed assets.

Sources this week confirmed that while some dividends to secured creditors had been paid $450,000 to $500,000 is unlikely to satisfy Vardy and his backers if they suspect there’s questions around Tang’s right to the amounts of remuneration he’s claimed. Gotta’ come clean about the lien!