Bill Papas had $1bn float plans for Forum waste business

Forum’s Iugus food digester business and a new ‘smart bin’ rollout was to spearhead a huge European expansion for Bill Papas.

Forum boss Bill Papas once had planned a $1bn float of his waste-management company Iugis.

They were the $1bn float plans for an environmentally friendly waste and rubbish business that would make Bill Papas rich and fulfil his dreams of building a global business giant.

Papas, the Forum Finance boss facing more than $400m of fraud accusations involving big banks like Westpac, had ambitions for a sharemarket listing or “liquidity event” for a business he wanted to rapidly expand across Europe and around the world.

The business would have a particular focus on new “smart bin” technology, including sensors and load management and measurement systems installed on industrial-sized bins, linked to technology managed in the cloud and on an app.

Papas’s Australian operations had been developing the technology that was his “hero product” and would sweep Europe, he told staff.

Manufacturing operations under the Iugus banner would be based in Greece with headquarters probably in London, where the float could have taken place, The Weekend Australian has learned.

London is also where Papas still has several active companies registered under his name, including Iugus (UK) Limited and Iugus Holdings.

Iugus UK was a sponsor of English Premier League team Liverpool under a deal clinched by Papas that included promoter rights to future Australian tours by the famous club.

Papas, also known as Basile Papadimitrious, is understood to have kept details of his overseas business plans in a notebook in his Sydney office.

Papas is in Greece along with girlfriend and Forum employee Louise Agostino, who recently arrived to meet him in Thessaloniki. Iugus has an office in the port town, where Papas also owns waterside apartments and has been manufacturing his food digester machines.

About 50 of the new smart bins shipped to Australia this year, where they are currently in ­storage, along with hundreds of food digesters under his Iugus brand.

Mr Papas did not respond to requests for comment on Friday.

Like his float plans, any rollout of the digesters – including an order of about 120 machines earmarked for Woolworths outlets in a trial plan – now appears to be indefinitely delayed, and the days when Papas and his team partied with Jordan Belfort, the so-called “Wolf of Wall Street”, grow more distant by the day.

It is those digesters, installed in hotels, restaurants, pubs, supermarkets and shopping centres across Australia, that form the basis of the fraud accusations that have ensnared Westpac, Societe Generale and Japan’s SMBC Leasing and Finance.

The allegations against Papas and the Forum entities relate to forged invoices and signatures for equipment lease agreements that were not signed off by customers, including Veolia Environmental Services.

Most of the agreements were for the food digester machines, which process tens of kilograms of food waste.

Westpac detailed allegations of 100 fraudulent transactions worth $341m in a 294 page statement of claims lodged with the Federal Court this week.

The bank says its exposure to Forum Finance is about $294m.

Papas is understood to have been making repayments of $6m-$7m on loans each month, and never missed an instalment.

However, the goods claimed to have been leased in many instances are alleged to not exist.

The vast Papas empire – which includes assets in Greece, such as the Xanthi soccer club he pumped $15m into last year, Britain and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Australia – is now the subject of an international asset freezing order as Westpac investigates the money trail.

There are also growing suspicions among the three banks taking legal action against Forum Finance that the alleged fraud may have started years before the 2018 timing outlined by Westpac in its statement of claim.

Commonwealth Bank is the latest to be linked to the Forum Finance fiasco, with sources suggesting the bank holds mortgages over several NSW properties linked to Papas and fellow Forum director Vincenzo Tesoriero.

Those loans are secured by the property, and CBA is said to have several commercial transactional bank facilities associated with some of the Forum entities too.

The statement of claims lodged by Westpac in the Federal Court this week revealed Papas and Tesoriero own at least $50m of property in Victoria, NSW and Queensland.

Westpac has alleged that some have been paid for with money transferred from Forum companies.

National Australia Bank is the mortgage holder for the bulk of properties entangled in the administration, liquidation and asset freezing court orders, and challenger bank Judo also has some exposure via mortgaged property.

Forum Group of Companies and its subsidiaries, including Forum Finance, Iugus and other businesses such as Autonomous Energy, are now in the hands of administrators and liquidators McGrathNicol – which also were appointed administrators of New Zealand entities this week.

So far about five entities are in liquidation.

Meanwhile, the sale of collapsed Forum Group to Eric Constantindis and his Our Kloud group on Thursday is understood to have had a price tag of about $434,000.

Our Kloud has picked up the liabilities for 72 Forum staff totalling about $1.6m, with another 68 being made redundant.

Another 50 Iugus staff have already been terminated.

The connections between Our Kloud and Forum, which had annual revenue of up to $50m, run deep.

Forum is understood to be the major customer of Our Kloud, while the company’s chief executive, Eric Constantinidis, introduced the company to its auditors, Rothsay.

Constantinidis also had a key role in setting up Forum, serving as director of the company in 2011. Mr Constantinidis is not accused of any wrongdoing.

Rothsay has previously hit out at Forum boss Papas, with the firm’s principal Frank Vrachas saying the alleged scheme was “carefully designed to be concealed from us, from the banks, from the shareholders and even from supposed recipients of the finance”.

Forum has been audited since 2015 by Rothsay, which handled its taxes before it became a significant entity.

The auditors have also hit back at accusations made by Papas’ legal representatives, who said they had been unable to prepare an affidavit of his assets due to non-co-operation by Rothsay.

But Rothsay principal Frank Vrachas said the auditor had been contacted on July 12 by Papas’s lawyer Rocco Panetta.

“The request for information from Papas’s lawyer was unusual to say the least – he should have been able to get the information from Papas or company and property searches,” Mr Vrachas said, responding on July 13.

“The request was not a subpoena or a request under corporation law, and also included a significant amount of information on companies that we did not act for.”

Rothsay reported Forum to ASIC on June 30 after the alleged fraud was revealed.

“Our response was simply that we did not want to be assisting Papas who in our minds ceased to be a client when we became aware of the alleged fraud and as to how we would have our costs covered,” Mr Vrachas said.

“We did not receive a response.”