Bill Express' mates feared eating porridge
Craig Crosbie and Ian Carlson, the liquidators of Bill Express, took possession of more than one million documents relating to the failed payments company on Friday.The documents were delivered pursuant to court summonses issued to Sandro Di Donato and Peter Couper, both now executives with satellite internet provider Activ8Me. The Supreme Court of Victoria had previously been told many of the records of Bill Express group companies were contained on computers now being used by Activ8Me while others were stored at private residences.Yesterday the liquidators recalled former Bill Express chief financial officer Marc Lichtenstein to the witness box to answer more questions about financial dealings in the last years of Bill Express, which went into liquidation in July 2008, owing creditors almost $250 million.Lichtenstein repeated his earlier testimony that, despite being the CFO for two and a half years until September 2007, he was largely excluded from the treasury functions of the Bill Express group of companies. Lichtenstein claimed in court that he was bullied by Bill Express's former CEO Ian Christiansen into signing documents and not reporting his concerns and certain financial matters to the board directly.Later Lichtenstein was presented with emails from Larry Shute, an executive with Sydney-based listed telecommunications provider ETT (now known as Farmworks Australia) regarding the sale of mobile phone airtime concluded on 30 June 2007.The airtime, called SIMEX stock, was purchased by Bill Express on 31 May 2007 for $1.9 million, from Mr Tom Curtain of Interlinear, the court was told. Four weeks later the SIMEX stock was sold to ETT for $5.9 million. Lichtenstein said he had already been asked about the transaction by ASIC."Was this transaction designed to inflate the balance sheet of Bill Express?" the liquidator's counsel, Peter Bick, asked."Yes," replied Lichtenstein."Was Peter Couper responsible for the transaction?""Yes.""Were you suspicious of this transaction?""The whole notion," replied Lichtenstein, who tendered his resignation from Bill Express shortly after.Lichtenstein told the court that before he left the company to take up his present position with listed environmental company CleanTech, he asked ETT and Tom Curtain to provide documentary evidence for audit purposes of the existence of the airtime and the transaction.He was shown an email from Larry Shute of ETT to Peter Couper, written in response to his request.The court heard that the email read, in part, "Mate, I want to help and I will help, however I am not fond of porridge."Bick asked Lichtenstein whether he believed that the reference to porridge was Shute's way of saying that he didn't want to go to gaol."Yes I do," replied Lichtenstein.