Daughter of former bankrupt builder Sam Sgherza Snr being sued over $190,000 in payments from liquidated company Build 29

The daughter of a disgraced SA builder is defending claims she has to repay $190,000 to a liquidated company linked to her dad and brother.

Sam Sgherza Snr leaving the Adelaide Magistrates Court in June 2018 after sentencing submissions for a bankruptcy case.

The daughter of a disgraced builder is being sued for nearly $190,000, which liquidators claim she should never have received from the accounts of a company controlled by her father and brother.

SV Partners, liquidators of Adelaide firm Build 29, are demanding Deanna Sgherza – daughter of former bankrupt Sam Sgherza – repay $189,891.

They argue the company, which was wound up in July 2018 owing $4.65m, received “no benefit” from the payments, a District Court claim says.

Mr Sgherza and his son Sam Jnr were directors of Build 29 at various times between April 24, 2016 and March 23, 2018 when 70 payments were made to Ms Sgherza’s accounts, the claim says.

SV Partners allege that Ms Sgherza did not provide any “real, substantive or meaningful services” to Build 29 and that the company “suffered loss in the amount of the payments”.

SV Partners are seeking a court order that each payment breached the Corporations Act because they were an “unreasonable director-related transaction” and that a “reasonable person” would not have made the payment “having regard to the detriment to the company”.

A schedule of company bank transfers, attached to the liquidator’s statement of claim, alleges that $131,819 was transferred to Ms Sgherza’s personal account, $56,400 moved to accounts described as “Deanna Sgherza East Parkway Account” and “Deanna Sgherza Lot 7 Account” and $1671.8 to a “ANZ Deanna car” account.

“Deanna is indebted to the company for the outstanding amount (and) has failed to pay the outstanding amount to the company,” the claim says.

The liquidators are also seeking legal costs and interest in the case.

Ms Sgherza, in a defence filed by Starke Lawyers, has sought to have the matter dismissed and denies she is indebted to the company.

She denies the payments were “unreasonable director-related payments” or that the payments were to a “close associate of a director of the company”.

She also denies that the she did not provide any “real, substantive or meaningful services to the company”.

The matter was heard last week and has been set down for a settlement conference on January 25, 2022.

Build 29 built the August Towers apartment development on the corner of Hutt St and South Tce

In evidence before a Federal Court examination in March, Mr Sgherza Snr, did not know why $233,000 was allegedly transferred from the accounts of Build 29 to a property firm connected to his daughter and ex-wife.

Mr Sgherza Snr avoided jail in 2018 after he was convicted and fined for breaching bankruptcy laws when he illegally withdrew $247,000 from bank accounts a year before declaring bankruptcy in 2012.

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