Billionaire heiress Heloise Pratt has accused her former husband Alex Waislitz of using the couple’s shared assets to provide “loans” to his singer-actress fiancee, Rebekah Behbahani.
The claims were revealed at a court hearing on Friday where Pratt is suing Waislitz for the alleged mismanagement of a trust controlled by the now estranged couple.
Rebekah Behbahani and Alex Waislitz at the Australian Open men’s final.Credit: Arsineh Houspian
Pratt launched action in the Victorian Supreme Court last year to remove her former husband as a director of their jointly controlled private investment company, Jamahjo, alleging he had falsified records and had been improperly paid $1.147 million from a jointly controlled family trust without her knowledge or input.
Waislitz, who runs the Thorney investment business, hit back at the claims in his defence filed before Christmas, saying his former wife had abdicated her role as a director through her limited interest in their business affairs over several years.
Since breaking up in 2015, both billionaires have moved on to new relationships, with Waislitz engaged to Behbahani and Pratt in a relationship with former Noiseworks frontman Jon Stevens. Behbahani, who performs under the stage name Behani, has been busy over the past year promoting her reality television series about her journey towards becoming a recording artist.
On Friday morning, Pratt’s counsel Allan Myers, KC, argued in court it was necessary to hold a preliminary hearing to resolve whether an independent trustee should be placed to oversee the trust until the trial, given there were already concerns about the management of the trust.
Heloise Pratt and her partner Jon Stevens at the 2023 Melbourne Cup.Credit: Eddie Jim
“And it’s not only a distribution of money under the trust. It is, for example, the companies making loans,” Myers said.
“We’re very concerned about that. Indeed, the evidence is Mr Waislitz’s girlfriend will be getting loans from the trust, and they’ll call them loans – though they aren’t – until they work out what else they could possibly call them. So we say that there are matters that require the position of the trustee to be clarified,” Myers said.
Jamahjo is the trustee for the now estranged couple’s Halex family trust. The assets in the trust are tied to investments in Waislitz’s Thorney business empire, including a stake in Tiga, a business that owns shares in a range of ASX listed and unlisted investments.
Myers told the court there was a risk that any future distribution from Tiga from the 2025 financial year would be at risk of again being directed to Waislitz, without an independent party being put in to oversee the trust on an interim basis until the matter was resolved.
Happier times: Jeanne Pratt, Anthony Pratt, Heloise Pratt, Eddie Maguire and Alex Waislitz at a 2010 event.Credit: Paul Rovere
Waislitz’s counsel Jeremy Stoljar, SC, told the court the allegations regarding the loans made by Pratt had not been properly outlined in the pleadings against his client, and were instead included in an affidavit he described as an “embarrassing mismatch”.
Stoljar told the court the allegations “seem to relate to loans said to have been made to third parties, not by Jamahjo, but by parties in relation to which Jamahjo may have a direct or indirect shareholding”.
On the suggestion of Justice Jim Delany, Stoljar said his clients – which also include other Waislitz associates who are directors of Jamahjo – would provide an undertaking to make no decision regarding the actions of the trust until the September trial to avoid a preliminary hearing.
The case continues.
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