A firm of business advisers accused of helping company directors hide cash and assets from creditors and the tax office has gone into liquidation, raising questions over whether the firm’s activities will ever be properly investigated by government agencies.
The firm, melbourne-based SMEs R Us, was one of a number of “pre-insolvency advisers” identified by the ABC last year as facilitating the practice of “phoenixing”, whereby cash and assets are stripped out of a business, it goes into liquidation, then restarts under a different name having avoided paying creditors.
A report from several years ago estimated the practice costs the Australian economy more than $3 billion a year, but the figure is almost certainly greater than that.
Federal government agencies are struggling to stamp out the practice, which has boomed in recent years.
Industry sources said the director of SMEs R Us, Stephen O’Neill, is one of the most prolific pre-insolvency advisers in the country.
He was convicted and jailed in 2001 for stealing from customers of his mortgage-broking business.
The ABC reported that O’Neill — also known as Steve Marks — had siphoned more than $1.6 million out of a civil engineering company, Global Contracting, before it went…
