Asic Applies To Have Companies Wound Up In Court
Newcastle Herald
Monday January 29, 2007
COMPANIES associated with Newcastle businessman and moneylender Mr Mark Hughes are facing a wind-up application today by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC).
ASIC has confirmed it is seeking wind-up orders in the NSW Supreme Court against Mr Hughes's companies Integrated Lending Pty Ltd and Integrated Lending (Victoria) Pty Ltd. The applications will be heard in Sydney today. Another company owned by Mr Hughes is under external administration and facing a wind-up application by a creditor company. Australasian Mortgage Finance Pty Ltd, trading as Total Cash pawnbrokers at Broadmeadow, has been placed in the hands of a voluntary administrator, Mr Stuart Ariff, with debts to trade creditors of about $40,000. The company also owes $300,000 to a trust controlled by Mr Hughes. A spokesman for Mr Ariff said the administrator had been appointed on December 21, the same day that training and labour supply company MEGT filed a court application to have the firm wound up over a debt of about $8000. The application is set down to be heard on February 14.Some investors and some former business partners have lodged affidavits with ASIC, complaining about the way Mr Hughes allegedly traded the companies.One investor, former Newcastle mural artist Birgitte Hansen, now living at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains, has complained that she lost most of an $80,000 investment Mr Hughes persuaded her to place with his company in 2003.Ms Hansen last July won a $300,000 judgement against Integrated Lending, but the bankruptcy notice issued as a result of the judgement has been unable to be served on Mr Hughes, according to Ms Hansen's lawyer Richard Murphy.Mr Hughes denied there was anything improper in the way he traded the companies or dealt with investors' funds.
© 2007 Newcastle Herald
Share This