Judge orders Unilife boss to pay back loan, plus a margin Ben Hills December 16, 2006
ALAN SHORTALL, the chief executive of struggling publicly listed high-tech wannabe Unilife Medical Solutions, has been ordered to pay more than $500,000 to his former de facto wife.
A Supreme Court judge on Friday found that Mr Shortall owed Louise White, a Byron Bay receptionist, the money after she lent him $47,000 which he promised to secure against shares in the company - but later reneged on the agreement.
In his judgement, Justice Joseph Campbell said he did not accept Mr Shortall's evidence on a number of points.
Justice Campbell said there were "many unusual and unexplained features of the relationship" between Mr Shortall and Unilife's biggest shareholder, the elusive Roger Williamson.
Mr Shortall, a shaven-headed 52-year-old Irishman and racehorse owner who has headed Unilife (formerly Unitract) since it floated four years ago, lived with Ms White and her two children by a previous marriage in a beachside house at Byron Bay between 1999 and 2003.
She lent him the $47,000 in various amounts and Mr Shortall promised to secure them against 220,000 Unilife shares.
"You are a rich woman," he allegedly told her, after the shares soared through the $2 mark shortly after listing.
However, when Ms White asked him to transfer the shares to her, Mr Shortall refused, claiming they were subject to an "escrow" which prevented him from selling or transferring them.
In the meantime, the share price collapsed after Unilife repeatedly missed deadlines to manufacture a disposable syringe.
On Friday shares in the company closed at 23c.
According to the company's latest annual return, Mr Shortall earns $372,000 a year and has been issued with 6.5 million shares and 7 million options in the company.
In earlier evidence, Ms White's barristers, Kevin Ryan and Paul Castley, suggested that "Roger Williamson", a mysterious British investor who is Unilife's largest shareholder with 10 million shares through a company called Merkaba Ltd, was in fact "an alias or nom de plume" for Mr Shortall, and that the shares were in fact controlled by Mr Shortall.
Over the years "Roger Williamson" has made several million dollars selling down his shareholding, and has transferred substantial amounts to Underline International Pty Ltd, a company controlled by Mr Shortall.
A bank statement produced in court showed that in 2004 alone "Williamson" transferred more than $700,000 to Mr Shortall's company.
While Justice Campbell made no findings about these allegations - which Mr Shortall denied on oath - he did say that "one possible explanation of the evidence might be that Mr Williamson or Merkaba Ltd holds some shares in [Unilife] on trust for the defendant [Shortall]."
Justice Campbell ordered Mr Shortall to pay Ms White $548,452, based on the price she might have got for the shares if she had been able to sell them before they tanked.
UNI Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
