Unfrozen assets expose claim saga details

By Deborah Hill Cone

Friday 20th August 2004

Controversial venture capitalist Robin Johannink has won his bid to have his assets unfrozen by the High Court, but in the process has revealed for the first time details of the serious claims saga against him by battery company Ilion Technology Corporation.

The assets in Johannink's Phoenix Trust were locked and limits placed on his business activities in June at an ex parte hearing - one where Johannink was not present.

But this week after Johannink's lawyer Bruce Stewart QC argued his client was not a "dissipation or flight risk," Justice Geoffrey Venning lifted the restrictions. Details of Ilion's claim were aired for the first time during the hearing.

IIlion is suing Johannink over six share transactions in which it claims he sold Ilion shares owned by Phoenix Trust to investors who thought they were buying newly-issued shares as part of a capital raising.

Phoenix Trust pocketed money for the shares which should have gone to the company, Ilion claims, and it has laid a complaint about the transactions with the Serious Fraud Office.

On Friday the court heard investors involved in the transactions included The Warehouse founder Stephen Tindall who spent $500,000 on a stake in Ilion through his investment vehicle Albert Park Trustee Company.

"It was a fundamental feature of the transaction for Tindall and Albert Park that it was to be a purchase of new shares by way of an investment in [Ilion] and not a purchase of shares already on issue to Phoenix Trust," Ilion's counsel John Billington QC told the court.

Johannink used "subterfuge" or "dummy" bank accounts set up to carry out these transactions which totalled $1.8 million, Billington claimed.

The court documents show Johannink raised $58 million of capital for Ilion between 1994 and 2001. This week Johannink contacted NBR to emphasise he did not take any commission from this.

"The fact is that my interests received no commission, absolutely zero, for any capital raised for Illion, Virionyx or Vortec under our management agreement with those companies," Johannink said.

He said following Justice Venning's ruling it was clear that any proceeding would now involve less than $2 million, rather than $7 miliion first claimed.

Stewart had argued for Justice Venning to lift the Mareva injuction on the grounds Ilion did not have a good arguable case.

The prescribed subscription limit for the capital raising had been reached without Tindall's transaction, Stewart said.

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