Cricket tour company traded insolvent for three years before collapse, liquidator says

A Sydney sports tour operator whose $3 million collapse left scores of young cricketers and top coaches high and dry is suspected to have committed a series of offences including allegedly trading while insolvent for nearly three years.

Calypso Destinations, whose major shareholder and director was Sydney businessman Kevin Tyler, organised international tours for talented players and their coaches, among them former NSW and Australian representatives.

Kevin Tyler, the director of Calypso Destinations, which was placed into liquidation in April.Credit: Instagram

It was placed into liquidation in April, forcing once-in-a-lifetime junior cricket tours of the Caribbean and India to be cancelled and leaving the parents of emerging players and the academies where they train with losses of more than $1 million.

Tyler, who ran the company from an office in Seven Hills, may now face potential prosecution by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, after an investigation found he may be responsible for a handful of breaches of corporation laws.

A report to creditors filed with ASIC by Westburn Advisory liquidator Shumit Banerjee said preliminary investigations suggested the tour operator director was suspected of continuing to trade while insolvent, a failure to act with a degree of care and diligence, failing to act in good faith and for a proper purpose, and improper use of his position and information to gain an advantage to the detriment of the company.

“My investigations indicate that prima facie, the company traded while insolvent since at least around 1 July 2021,” the report said.

Jason Krejza, centre, one of the coaches affected by the company’s collapse, celebrates after dismissing Indian batsman Rahul Dravid during a Test match in Nagpur in 2008.Credit: AP

Tyler, a former fifth-grade captain for Parramatta in the NSW Premier Cricket competition, continued to operate the company until its demise four months ago. The liquidator said he faced an insolvent trading claim of up to $1.8 million.

Possible breaches would need further investigation by ASIC, which may lead to prosecution, said the documents lodged with the corporate watchdog.

Calypso Destinations fell over with $2.3 million in unsecured creditors including Tyler himself, who is listed as claiming $924,000 in “loans to the company” that he made.

The liquidator’s report said Tyler may have a defence against insolvent trading claims because of advances made to the company that were under continuing investigation.

Tyler declined to comment when contacted. He asked this masthead to send questions to his lawyer, who did not reply.

Tyler told the liquidator he had begun to encounter financial problems with the advent of travel restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said the virus-era curbs had adversely affected the company’s performance. He cited factors including a substantial rise in operating costs and an increasing difficulty collecting outstanding debts from clients on time and receiving full refunds from airlines and hotels. The company was required to take out high interest short-term loans to tackle losses, he told the liquidator, as well as a loan under a federal government pandemic support scheme that left it with significant debt.

The Westburn Advisory investigation highlighted payments totalling $674,488 in the lead-up to the company’s liquidation that may be deemed unfair preference transactions. They included $277,831 to an American Express corporate card and $104,624.03 to a hotel in Bengaluru. According to the report, Tyler indicated “significant pressure was received” in the case of the hotel, so the company paid it.

But those who had paid thousands of dollars for tours almost certainly won’t see any of their money.

The estimated recovery value is $3.1 million but the liquidator concluded that Tyler’s financial position was such that clawing back any funds was unlikely.

Those left out of pocket include the families of dozens of teenagers trained by former NSW batsmen Nick Bertus and David Dawson, ex-Test spin bowler Jason Krejza and Brendan Lyon, the brother of Australia’s third-highest Test wicket-taker of all time Nathan Lyon, as well as the coaches themselves.

Cancelled youth tours to Barbados and the Sunshine Coast for tournaments last month were resurrected but only because of fundraising and additional financial contributions by coaches and families, who didn’t want the emerging players to miss out.

The team that travelled to the West Indies with Bertus and Lyon won the competition there.

Krejza, who played two Tests and eight one-day internationals for Australia, was also able to save a winter tour to Queensland.

“For the kids, for a year they’d been signed up and looking forward to this tournament,” he said.

“We didn’t want that opportunity to be lost on the kids. So we pretty much said ‘let’s organise it ourselves’. All the parents had to pay extra and we pretty much provided that tour and experience for the kids. We did it I guess in a no-frills way because if we did it to the level we wanted everyone would have had to pay double, which I don’t think would have been fair.

“The kids just want to play cricket and that’s the main goal, for the kids to be playing good cricket, as often as possible.”