Arabian connections at Bill Express
Bill Express funded the entrepreneurial visions and dreams of its chief executive, Ian Christiansen and his late brother Hal Chistiansen, the Supreme Court of Victoria heard yesterday.Profit results were created and funding was also provided to Australian Private Networks (a private company that now trades as Activ8Me, Australia's largest satellite broadband provider) in a convoluted funding arrangement relying on cash from the "Arabian Highway".Executives and others associated with Bill Express are being examined at a hearing bought by the liquidators, PPB.The former chief executive officer of Bill Express, Ian Christiansen, said he was not aware of accounting journal entries made after balance dates that had the effect of creating a profit for Bill Express. He denied every having bullied anyone at Bill Express or inducing financial controllers to sign documents or face losing their job.In February 2007 a deposit transaction of around $4 million was recorded in the accounts of Bill Express and backdated to November 2006. The deposit was supposedly money from an Islamic sharia compliant funding arrangement with Charles Ridley's CCH, also referred to in court by counsel for the liquidator, Peter Bick, as the "Arabian Highway". This transaction had the effect of turning a $2 million loss into a $2 million profit for the half year ended 31 December 2007.Counsel for the liquidator asked Chirstiansen whether the money actually existed or whther this was a fictitious transaction."Bill Express was running at a loss, wasn't it Mr Christiansen?" asked Bick."I'm not aware that we were running at a loss," said Christiansen.He denied that an arrangement where Bill Express paid $4100 to APN for each new customer APN signed up to its government subsidised satellite broadband service and received $500 was a funding deal for his business associate Sandro Di Donato.That deal was also part of a complex cash flow financing arrangement over what Bick again referred to as Arabian Highway.Di Donato was also responsible for a the financial arrangements of a key private company in the Bill Express group, TBS, that racked up big loan debts to Bill Express, Christiansen told the court. TBS money was used to repay a share option deal in 2005 that delivered the Christiansen's control of Bill Express' parent company OnQ.Bick asked Christiansen whether the job of CEO of Bill Express was simply too much for him to handle."Were you up to the job of being a CEO of Bill Express, a public company?""I'm not going to sit here and be smug and say I did a very good job, the final outcome was not a good outcome," said Christiansen.