This could only be because Adam Toma is on the same take as Paul Pattison . To expose Paul Pattison would expose the scam at ITSA
Eat your own shit Adam Toma!!!!!!
THE corporate regulator has launched Victorian Supreme Court action to bar Melbourne-based liquidator Paul Pattison from practising after his own firm sank into liquidation last year.
Mr Pattison owes about $2.5 million to Bankwest and at least $1.5 million to the Tax Office for unpaid business tax, interest and penalties incurred in his practice, which until April traded as Pattison Consulting.
Mr Pattison still operates as a bankruptcy trustee and liquidator through his new practice, Pattison Business Reconstruction and Insolvency Services, and he controls at least 100 files on company insolvencies and hundreds more on personal bankruptcies.
But the Australian Securities and Investments Commission's court move precipitated an urgent meeting yesterday of the board of the professional body governing liquidators, the Insolvency Practitioners Association of Australia (IPA), which immediately suspended Mr Pattison's membership and began its own disciplinary proceedings against him.
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Mr Pattison's circumstances have underscored concerns about disciplinary procedures within the insolvency industry and refocused attention on a profession still reeling from allegations about rogue practitioners and adverse findings last year by a Senate inquiry.
One experienced practitioner said it ''beggars belief'' that a liquidator could go broke and yet continue to practice.
The liquidator in charge of Pattison Consulting believes the practice may have traded while insolvent for almost three years.
Mr Pattison's employees are claiming hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid wages, accrued leave and outstanding superannuation entitlements, and a further $105,000 is owed to an associated company, Pattison (Australia) Pty Ltd, which is also in liquidation.
ASIC is investigating Mr Pattison for possible breaches of sections 180, 181, 183 of the Corporations Act, which relate to fiduciary duties, 596AB regarding avoidance of employee entitlements, and 588G, which is the requirement not to trade while insolvent.
Under the Corporations Act, ASIC has two routes for disciplinary action: it can refer matters to the Companies Auditors and Liquidators Board; or it can apply directly to the Supreme Court.
ASIC wants the court to order Mr Pattison to stop practising until he can show he has the capacity to ''adequately and properly carry out his duties as a liquidator''. It also wants arrangements made for his current files to be distributed among other liquidators, and for a receiver to be appointed to his new PBRIS practice.
Neither Mr Pattison nor his lawyer returned calls or emails yesterday. ASIC declined to comment.
IPA president Mark Robinson said the IPA had been investigating Mr Pattison since November.
Mr Pattison has been a registered liquidator since 1984 and an official liquidator of the Federal Court and the Victorian Supreme Court for almost 20 years.
Pattison Consulting was put into what is known as a member's voluntary liquidation in April 2010 on the understanding that it would repay its debts within 12 months.
Mr Pattison and Pattison Consulting's then liquidator, Stirling Horne of Lawler Draper Dillon, agreed Mr Pattison could transfer all the insolvency and bankruptcy files of the old business to his new firm, allowing him to generate income to repay creditors.
But after Mr Pattison failed to remit any sums to Mr Horne by October, Bankwest appointed receivers and Mr Horne moved to appoint a new administrator, Peter Vince of Vince & Associates. Both Bankwest and Mr Vince opposed Mr Pattison's plan for a deed of company arrangement, and creditors voted in early December to liquidate his firm.
Mr Vince told creditors the firm suffered from a lack of cash flow, high overheads, insufficient working capital and ''poor strategic management'', and that it may have been insolvent since May 2007.
Some insolvency specialists suggested that Mr Pattison, widely recognised as one of the more aggressive and litigious practitioners of the past two decades, had failed to adjust his business to suit the tough conditions experienced in the insolvency industry.
Insolvency specialists claim their operating margins have tightened in the past few years, in part because the financial crisis curbed lending and because banks in the past two decades have adopted more rigorous internal controls over problem loans. That means the small businesses that do tip into administration or liquidation tend to generate only slim returns.
The Senate inquiry last year recommended the responsibilities for supervising and disciplining liquidators and trustees, which now reside with ASIC, be transferred to Insolvency and Trustee Service Australia so as to form the Australian Insolvency Practitioners Authority.
IPA chief executive Denise North said the professional body was ''committed to maintaining the highest standards of conduct in the profe
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