Bankrupt gym operator Jake Henley has been hit with a three-year ban on managing companies

An entrepreneur, whose failed companies still owe huge amounts to Brisbane creditors, has been banned from managing businesses for just three years. Nine of his companies collapsed in 2017 owing nearly $13.8m.

You might say it’s just a pathetic slap on the wrist for someone who left a trail of financial ruin in his wake.

A bankrupt gym and construction entrepreneur, whose failed companies still owe huge amounts of money to creditors across Brisbane, has just been banned from managing businesses for a mere three years.

ASIC announced the action this week against Jake Henley after nine of his companies collapsed with collective debts of nearly $13.8m in 2017.

But it’s worse than that.

Records show Henley, whose firms allegedly dudded tradies and suppliers that worked on projects such as his now-defunct Fit Village at Paddington, previously served as a director of at least 40 entities, the bulk of which have also gone belly up.

Jake Henley

A creditor tipped Henley into personal bankruptcy in 2017. Yet City Beat has learned the usual three-year term was extended in mid-2020 at the request of his trustees just four days before he was set to be discharged.

They said he had been uncooperative, failing to provide information as required about his property and income. Worse still, he had allegedly offloaded assets improperly and pocketed the profits at the expense of his creditors.

“The bankrupt disposed of property but failed to explain adequately to the trustees why no money was received as a result of the disposal or what the bankrupt did with the money received as a result of the disposal,’’ the bankruptcy document states.

Henley is now set to be discharged in July 2025, meaning the ASIC three-year ban has effectively no impact since bankrupts can’t serve as company directors anyway.

Henley, a 35-year-old bloke understood to be living in Queensland, said Friday he had already lodged an appeal against the ASIC decision. “I don’t believe it’s a correct representation of what happened,’’ he told your diarist without elaborating.

He might be in Brisbane next week when a case against him returns to the Magistrates Court.

Last October, Henley was charged with one count of forgery and one count of uttering a forged document.

He has yet to enter a plea in the matter, which relates to the alleged fabrication and distribution of a Commonwealth Bank receipt, and declined to comment about it when we chatted briefly with him.

Henley also refused to discuss the reasons behind his bankruptcy extension or why he had failed to pay creditors who had won court orders to recover moneys owed.

Among them are a woman who secured a judgment last year to recoup nearly $25,000 and an architect who has been chasing almost $16,000 since 2018.

Also left empty-handed is a building firm owed about $1.4m for work on that Paddington fitness centre. The Queensland Building and Construction Commission ordered Henley to pay the debt in 2019.

After all that, ASIC said its move this week related primarily to just two of Henley’s now-defunct companies, Gym and Tonic Pty Ltd and Yelneh Industries Pty Ltd.

The regulator said Henley had failed to keep accurate records, hindered liquidators by not providing documents and allowed the entities to trade while likely insolvent.

He also “improperly used his position as director by transferring or withdrawing a combined total of $154,690 from the companies to gain an advantage for himself or related parties’’.

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