THE OUSTED chief executive of collapsed brokerage Opes Prime Group has been barred from leaving the country, while up to 1200 clients are still in the dark about what will happen to their frozen accounts.
Lirim "Laurie" Emini, 44, was slapped with orders restricting his travel late on Friday night after the corporate watchdog, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), went to the Federal Court.
It is understood his passport has been surrendered and he has been banned from approaching international airports or other departure points.
It is also believed ASIC is examining whether it needs to ask the court for further restrictions that include freezing Mr Emini's local assets and preventing money from being transferred out of Australia.
An ASIC team has spent the weekend examining the company's accounts.
Mr Emini, who lives in Templestowe, Melbourne, has not been at the Melbourne offices of Opes Prime for the past week. He appears to be on forced leave from the company, where he served as chief executive alongside executive directors Julian Smith and Anthony Blumberg.
Mr Emini is due to reappear before the court on April 4.
Opes Prime has been suspended from trading on the Australian Securities Exchange because of "internal stock and cash movement irregularities". The specialist broker has also reportedly succumbed because a number of major clients had not met their margin calls.
While investors try to work out the ramifications on individual stocks, several companies have been placed in a trading halt as a result of Opes Prime's collapse, including clothing manufacturer Austin Group and insolvency and administration service Reco Financial Services, which was to be purchased by Opes Prime as part of a backdoor listing.
Related entities, including the unlisted investment vehicle Hawkswood Investments, have been placed in administration.
Late last week, Mr Smith and Mr Blumberg appointed John Lindholm of Ferrier Hodgson as voluntary administrator of the group, which offered broking, margin lending and securities lending services. Deloitte partners Chris Campbell and Sal Algeri were also appointed receivers and managers by Opes Prime's major lender, ANZ.
The bank is taking steps to recover about $650 million, by selling the shares it held as security, while the other secured lender, Merrill Lynch, is owed between $350 million and $400 million.
Yesterday, Mr Campbell, Mr Lindholm and ASIC representatives were compiling an information sheet for between 1000 and 1200 Opes clients whose accounts had been frozen. It should be released today.
Mr Lindholm had spoken positively about the likelihood of recovering money for unsecured creditors including clients, but Mr Campbell said: "I'm probably not as willing to go out on a limb to say what the answer is going to be at the moment."
Deloitte's 10-member forensic team has completed copying Opes Prime documents, but Mr Campbell said staff had continued working over the weekend to analyse the documents.
The administrators will call a meeting of creditors for April 8.
