Tahmoor liquidators summon team Gupta

The security interest shell game Sanjeev Gupta has played with the assets of GFG Alliance was always going to come under scrutiny once one of the group’s entities fell into the hands of independent liquidators with funds.

That scrutiny was also always going to include Gupta’s lenders, lawyers and advisors and last month in the Federal Court McGrathNicol’s Shaun Fraser and Jonathan Henry gave practical effect to that inevitability.

On April 10 the pair obtained the first in a series of orders requiring Gupta and others to cough up documents relevant to Fraser and Henry’s investigations as the liquidators of Tahmoor Coal Pty Ltd, the metallurgical coal mine near Wollongong that Gupta raided in a failed bid to stabilise the balance sheet of related entity and Whyalla steelworks operator OneSteel Manufacturing Pty Ltd (Whyalla).

Recipients of notices to produce included Global Loan Agency Services Australia Nominees Pty Ltd (Glasan), Luminith Investments Pte. Ltd (Luminith); White & Case restructuring guru Tim Sacker, Norton Rose Fulbright’s insolvency guresse Laura Johns, Pinsent Mason’s conjurer-in-chief Peter Doyle, Jones Day’s local head of restructuring Roger Dobson and Liberty Primary Metals Australia Pty Ltd (LPMA), Gupta’s holding company which is currently subject to a deed of company arrangement (DoCA).

The orders, which are now no longer pressed against Glasan, Luminith, Sackar and Dobson, require that recipients divulge just about everything relating to the financial restructuring that took place in the second half of 2025 as Gupta sought to restart Tahmoor’s operations and sell the mine.

That includes any and all loan and security agreements entered into by Tahmoor during what Fraser and Henry identify as the relevant periods, being from 7 April 2025 to 8 October 2025 and from 1 January 2025 and 6 March 2026.

Lenders and lawyers however aren’t the liquidators’ only targets.

William Buck’s Michael Brereton, Sean Wengel and Rashnyl Prasad also received orders for production in their capacities as the deed administrators of Liberty Primary Metals Australia Pty Ltd (LPMA), which owns 100 per cent of the shares of Tahmoor Coal.

And last week Fraser and Henry obtained orders for the issue of examination summonses.

Unsurprisingly Gupta and Sandip Biswas, who was a director of Tahmoor until October last year, are to be examined.

But so too is Olvera Advisors’ founder Damian Hodgkinson, who’s been Gupta’s preferred advisor though not appointee in respect of the various external administration appointments made to GFG entities.

Nor, in the wake of Justice Michael Lee’s findings in ASIC V Bekier, have the liquidators ignored the potential for information that might be gleaned from ex-GFG general counsel Hilary Scott, who also resigned in October last year and legal advisor and Norton Rose head of restructuring APAC Alex Mufford.

Let the privilege claims commence.