Where Are You, Ian Rau? Chartwell Administrators Would Like To Talk

The Age

Saturday April 26, 2008

Marc Moncrief and Tom Arup, With Beck Eleven

ADMINISTRATORS of failed finance company Chartwell Enterprises are still searching for missing secretary Ian Rau, who has remained elusive since the collapse of the company.

While director Graeme Hoy is said to be co-operating with Chartwell administrator Bruno Secatore, Mr Secatore yesterday said Mr Hoy had not heard from Mr Rau since last week and receivers hadn't spoken to him since Monday.

Reliable sources told The Age that Mr Rau was seen visiting his mother in a Geelong hospital during the middle of this week. But when contacted by The Age yesterday, Mrs Rau said she hadn't spoken to her son since a phone conversation two weeks ago.

Though Mr Secatore does not have possession of Mr Rau's passport - unlike Mr Hoy's - he said yesterday he was not worried that Mr Rau would leave the country because his wife was due to give birth in days.

While Mr Secatore expressed his frustration about not being able to contact Mr Rau he said the administrators expect to receive documents on Monday stolen from the firm's ransacked offices.

Mr Secatore said clients who had raided the defunct broker's offices last week in a desperate search for their lost money, had contacted the Australian Securities and Investments Commission with the intent of handing over documents they had seized.

Without Chartwell's records it has been impossible for Mr Secatore to piece together a money trail that could answer whether money was lost in bad trades, moved overseas or squandered to prop up a pyramid scheme.

"The people who took them called ASIC to say, 'Hey, look what we have here'," Mr Secatore said. ASIC was looking at the papers and putting them in order to hand over, he said.

Mr Secatore said he hoped the documents would lead him to a better understanding of Chartwell's relationship with companies overseas.

He described a relationship with a company in Vanuatu as a "gimmick" designed to give the firm a worldly air. He had "little confidence" in a document purporting to show an $11 million payment to the company.

It remains possible that Chartwell had more substantial overseas interactions. For example, it is not yet clear whether Mr Hoy or Mr Rau sent money overseas using Blenheim House, a company registered in the tax haven of Seychelles.

Blenheim House is full owner of Delaware Company, which in turn owns futures broker Peter G. Moloney & Associates. All these companies are under investigation.

The Age yesterday contacted Intershore Consult, an international administrative company that can incorporate companies. This service provides Blenheim House with a Seychelles address, though it is unclear what activities the business might undertake.

An attendant would not provide any information about Blenheim without a director's consent - a problem that may also trouble Mr Secatore, since his administration is over Chartwell and not Blenheim House.

Mr Hoy is also believed to have other unpaid debts stretching back to the late 1990s when he lived in Queenscliff.

The Age believes that Mr Hoy was approaching small businesses in Queenscliff in the late 1990s offering big returns on investments of $5000 to $10,000, and was known in the seaside town by his self-declared nickname "Ace". -- With BECK ELEVEN

© 2008 The Age

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