Opinion
Almost Bankrupt Allan's dark horse
Neil ChenowethSenior writer
May 28, 2019 – 6.10pm
Albury’s favourite son Allan Endresz is bankrupt again . . . but not to worry, he’s got it on appeal (again). In the meantime he wants to tell you about a racehorse.
Alligator Blood is a two-year-old with
a rocket-like finish, and a clean leg action that might be modelled on Almost Bankrupt Allan’s own form when chased by pesky creditors.
Now Allan Endresz, perpetually the victim of terrible misunderstandings, has discovered blockchain. It's a matter of trust. Fairfax Media
And now he’s discovered blockchain.
Allan, who is serving out a 14-year ban as a director, is still being pursued by ASIC and the government over a trail of $8.725 million in missing funds from 1998 that Endresz has always made clear he never knew had been embezzled. Criminal charges against him were dismissed.
Yes, his company did end up with the money, but he was the victim here, which is why he spent years suing the government for $4.3 billion compensation. A couple of times in the 21-year pursuit it looked like ASIC and Treasury had finally bankrupted him, only for him to appeal or to open a new legal front that forced bankruptcy proceedings to be suspended.
On March 15 this year Justice Geoffrey Flick made a sequestration order against Endresz for $18.6 million in the ACT Federal Court. Naturally he appealed on April 5, putting himself back in play.
Almost all of his assets are subject to court freezing orders, but a man’s still got to live. The
Paradise Papers showed that in a three-month period he spent more than $100,000 on betting and gaming venues, even while he doesn’t own anything. Everything he has is held on trust for a mysterious offshore beneficiary, while he himself, the poor bloke, has nothing.
It’s easy to misunderstand these finer points. Documents from the Paradise Papers showed that
he was telling the Capital Security Bank in Rarotonga that he had $50 million of assets in Australia, and he was the owner.
He had an international money transfer business called Ezybonds that came to grief with some unhappy former clients saying some harsh things. The website is “currently offline for extended maintenance”, it says.
But that’s in the past. Now, apart from spruiking the Ezy No. 1 horseracing syndicate that owns Alligator Blood, Allan is working on an exciting new application called Zukaz, with a payment system involving Zucoins, an “augmented reality backed cryptocurrency token”.
Merchants just need to put their faith in an almost-bankrupt who is currently banned from directorships, using an opaque offshore structure, and who says he can’t be held responsible for any debt because it’s not his money. It’s a matter of trust.
“It’s Bitcoin on steroids — without the problems,” he says.
Maybe not for everyone. The picture of Allan on steroids is . . . troubling.
Correction: An earlier version of this story described Mr Endresz as a former insider trader. In fact in 1993 Endresz was convicted of eight counts of price manipulation, market rigging and making a false statement to the ASX, over a $560,000 trade of 4 million Emu Hill Gold shares between two companies he controlled, which lifted the market price by 40 per cent. He was fined approximately $13,000.
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