A gold coast businessman is in custody awaiting sentencing after he followed a plan to illegally strip his telecom company of money and assets before it went bust.
Key points:
- With the advice of two pre-insolvency advisers, Richard Ludwig arranged to illegally smuggle more than $740,000 out of his company Cap Coast Telecoms before it went into liquidation
- The two advisers, Stephen O’Neill and John Narramore, have received prison sentences while Ludwig is awaiting sentencing
- ASIC has admitted the pre-insolvency industry is largely unregulated
Richard Ludwig owned six Leading Edge Telecoms stores, which sold phone and internet products as a Telstra dealer, across Central Queensland.
They suddenly closed weeks after Christmas in early 2015.
On the surface, it appeared to be another business going to the wall after failing to pay its mounting bills, and the collapse left dozens of staff without jobs and millions of dollars owed to creditors.
But the ABC’s 7.30 program can reveal the reality was very different, because the collapse had been planned for months to avoid paying creditors, based on illegal advice from two pre-insolvency advisers.
Richard Ludwig has pleaded guilty to 11 charges in the Brisbane District Court, including dealing…