Former BBY chief charged
The former chief executive offailed stockbroker BBY faces two charges of aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring fraud after appearing in Downing Centre Local Court in Sydney.
Arunesh Narain Maharaj was charged on Tuesday. Louie Douvis
Each offence carries a maximum penalty of as much as 10 years imprisonment for Arunesh Narain Maharaj. The Australian Securities and Investment Commission alleges he aided another BBY employee to deceive and dishonestly obtain a financial advantage from Westpac subsidiary St George.
“The financial advantage was obtaining additional funding by way of improperly drawing down on an overdraft facilitation account which BBY held with St George Bank which BBY was not entitled to,” ASIC alleged.
The first charge relates to funding BBY obtained at the end of June 2013, and the second relates to funding obtained from November 2014 to early 2015.
The matter was adjourned until December 5.
BBY was a former stockbroker and financial services business that collapsed in 2015 when it could not repay a $6 million loan from St George. Administrators from KPMG estimated it had outstanding debts of $40 million, and a more than $20 million shortfall in client accounts. The firm also had several prior run-ins with the corporate regulator and the ASX over its capital buffers.
Liquidators would later estimate that the firm may have been trading while insolvent since early 2011. Courts also heard that executive chairman Glenn Roswell’s psychic healer, Nevine Rottinger, was preparing cash-flow forecasts and providing advice in the 12 months leading up to BBY’s collapse.
ASIC suspended the firm’s financial services licence in May 2015, and fully cancelled it June 2021. The regulator’s investigation is ongoing.
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