Bill Express buddies face court over share price rigging
Enzo Di Donato, a director of a company that shared premises and resources with Bill Express, will face a committal hearing in the Magistrates Court in Melbourne early next year. A magistrate yesterday set the hearing for 1 February 2011 and allowed three days for the committal.In March the Australian Securities and Investments Commission charged Di Donato with four counts of providing false or misleading information to ASIC during the course of an examination.Di Donato is a director of 3D Salesforce, a firm whose share trading accounts were used in connection with manipulating the price of Bill Express (BXP) shares, according to an ASIC media release published at the time. One of the witnesses in the case against Di Donato will be Newton Chan, a former Macquarie Bank broker, who last month was convicted of eight counts of market manipulation in BXP shares.The trading in BXP shares was designed to inflate the BXP share price and assist directors to avoid margin calls, the court has been told previously.Bill Express entered liquidation in July 2008, owing creditors almost $250 million.