Tissue box filled with cash, Woolworths bag of cocaine: Messy fallout of Sydney company’s $66m collapse

A Woolworths bag of cocaine and a tissue box stuffed with cash are at the centre of a scandal involving a jailed company director.

EXCLUSIVE

A company’s $66 million collapse is creating a messy fallout more than six months after the business went bust.

In March, NSW-based Fourteen Consulting Services Pty Ltd was court-ordered to go into liquidation.

The business, headquartered in Brighton Le Sands in Sydney’s south, offered labour hire services and had racked up liabilities of more than $66 million by the time it went under.

Last week, on Monday, the liquidator in charge of Fourteen Consulting Services, Darren Vardy, initiated winding up proceedings against 16 other companies to recover some money for its 11 creditors.

Fourteen’s former director, James Burns, ran the business for some time while he was in jail on drug possession offences, after police raided a residence in Sydney’s Waterloo in 2018. He resigned as the company's secretary in March 2021, before Fourteen Consulting Services stopped trading in August of that year. He resigned as director in March 2022. 

According to the court judgment, police found Mr Burns with cash, including a tissue box filled with $20 and $50 notes, and a number of illegal drugs such as cocaine, crystal meth and GHB, as well as steroids and testosterone.

It was part of a police raid to dismantle drug supply in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

Cocaine was found in a branded green Woolworths bag.

A green Woolworths branded bag was found in the bust containing 168.4 grams of cocaine.

Police found Mr Burns in a room with an unlocked padlock on the door which he said was his office and gaming room.

Mr Burns pleaded guilty to possession of three substances and also to driving with illicit drugs present in his system.

He was sentenced to prison for three years and three months.

By the time Fourteen Consulting Services collapsed, he had resigned as a director and there was another director in place, called Nektarios Kalathas.

Mr Burns’ former employer, Chris Henderson of NPC Advisory, indicated in the criminal trial he would immediately hire the convicted felon at the firm’s accounting division as soon as he left prison.

NPC Advisory has offices both in North Sydney and the Gold Coast.

Mr Henderson has since passed away, having been found dead at a North Sydney hotel on April 4 after police conducted a welfare check.

The father-of-five had worked at insolvency firms for a number of years before striking out on his own and launching NPC Advisory, as well as a number of other labour hire and payroll businesses.

Now, NPC Advisory and a number of its other branches are among those that had a winding up notice lodged against them last week.

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Sam Henderson (pictured) said he would hire James Burns after he came out of jail over his drug offences. Mr Henderson passed away at a Sydney hotel earlier this year.

Fourteen Consulting Services Pty Ltd was registered to a residential address in Brighton Le Sands.

At the centre of the issue is the fact that another company, called Boon Business Consultants Pty Ltd, owed Fourteen Consulting Services $66 million but could not pay the debt.

Mr Vardy got Boon forcibly wound up in the Federal Court and was appointed as its liquidator.

Questions have been raised, however, over who has control of Boon.

Boon’s director was Christopher Traill but Nicolas Kalathas was then added as a co-director in February this year.

“Boon’s affairs appear to have been under the control of persons other than its appointed company officers,” Judge Yates noted in the Federal Court hearing to have the company wound up.

“It is not known whether Nicolas Kalathas is the same person as Nektarios Kalathas, but the coincidence in names is noteworthy.”

The court heard that Mr Burns and NPC Advisory supplied important information about Boon’s financial position in a sign they were somehow linked to it, even though neither was a director or office holder at the company.

The court ruled that Boon be wound up into liquidation and Mr Vardy be appointed its liquidator in April this year, a month after Fourteen Consulting Services went bust.

News.com.au contacted NPC Advisory, Nicolas Kalathas and Mr Vardy for comment.

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