Fridge snookered in forex deep freeze

A MATCH-FIXING snooker champ and a former AFL footballer nicknamed “The Fridge” team up to tip people’s superannuation money into foreign exchange. What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty, it turns out. On Friday, on the urging of the corporate watchdog, Federal Court judge Michelle Gordon banned forex business Monarch FX from offering financial services until a hearing on November 21.

Documents filed with the court by ASIC name Monarch’s principal as one James Sonny Quinten Hunter, who Margin Callconfirms previously went by the name Quinten Hann.

In 2006, following a sting operation by Britain’s Sun newspaper, Hann was banned from snooker for eight years — at the time the longest ban ever handed out — for agreeing to take a £50,000 bribe to throw a match.

The paper had to sit on its scoop for two months until Hann was cleared of rape and assault charges.

ASIC told the court Monarch was getting customers to set up self-managed super funds whose funds were then automatically traded on the forex market using the “cutting-edge trading algorithms” of its MFXG Investor product.

And that’s where The Fridge, aka North Melbourne premiership player Mark Roberts, comes in. Roberts, who declined to comment, runs Gold Coast firm Breakaway Finance Group, which Monarch used to set up the SMSFs for customers.

A cached version of Monarch’s website shows it rented the financial services licence of another Gold Coast outfit, Avestra Capital, whose chief executive Clay Dempsey didn’t return Margin Call’scall.

It’s more recently been allowed to give “general advice” under the licence held by its trading platform provider, FXTG, whose chief executive Stavro D’Amore said he potted Monarch’s authorisation on Monday (although yesterday this was yet to show up on ASIC records).

D’Amore said Monarch had about 70 clients and charged between $8000 and $10,000 to set up each account. “People started complaining during the Avestra period — it doesn’t affect FXTG at all,” he said.

He said the Monarch accounts were frozen and he was contacting customers to see if they wanted to move to FXTG.

So how did match-fixer Hann/Hunter, who didn’t return a call to Monarch’s office, get to run a financial services business? That’s not clear, but it appears ASIC didn’t know about his background.

Crown flies the coop

JAMES Packer’s Crown empire has again decided to shun Millionaire’s Row, the stretch of corporate marquees along the straight at Flemington racecourse’s Birdcage enclosure that play host to the rich and infamous during the Melbourne spring racing carnival.

The casino group turned up in 2012, but was a no-show last year. The space will again be filled by a ticketed bar run by the Victoria Racing Club.

However, Crown will as usual run its secret squirrel marquee for high rollers up the other end of the racecourse.

In other Birdcage news, vitamin flogger Swisse, which is back after pulling out last year during a cash crunch, will resume its old space on Millionaire’s Row.

All the row’s other regular tenants — AAMI, Myer, the Herald Sun and Tabcorp — return this year, with Emirates and James Boag occupying their usual spots as bookends of the promenade.

Hedley to float Spring?

COULD former Macquarie Group executive Guy Hedley be the man to steer financial planning group Spring FG to a float?

Hedley, who Spring yesterday announced was stepping up from non-executive director to chairman of the board, got out of Macquarie in 2012 — just before the millionaire factory’s financial planning arm was slapped with an enforceable undertaking for giving shoddy advice.

Spring, meanwhile, is still working its way through an EU it signed in September last year after it rented its licence to Royale Capital, a company associated with twice-bankrupt Gold Coast operator Craig Gore and the alleged rip-off of millions of dollars from investors through a web of companies in Australia, the British Virgin Islands and the Caymans.

An independent expert was due to file a final report on Spring’s compliance with the EU any time now but an ASIC spokesman said the deadline “has been extended and as a result the EU is still ongoing”.

Spring chief executive Keith Cullen said the company had stopped renting out its licence.

“We’ve put in place the remedial actions that were recommended by the EU,” he said. He declined to be drawn on the prospects of a float.

“Mr Hedley’s got great experience with capital markets,” he said.

Grounds for concern

AND spotted in Sydney’s cheaper part of town for a light lunch was UBS powerbroker Matthew Grounds —but then again Surry Hills is coming along at a rapid pace.

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