Surfwear king in $13.5m forgery

ONE-TIME surfwear king Matthew Perrin forged his wife's signature to secure a $13.5 million lifeline from the bank, a judge has found.

Perrin court battle

ONE-TIME surfwear king Matthew Perrin forged his wife's signature to secure a $13.5 million lifeline from the bank as his finances crumbled, a judge found yesterday in another blow for the bankrupt entrepreneur.

The ruling means Mr Perrin's ex-wife, Nicole, can keep her "dream home" on the Gold Coast at the expense of the Commonwealth Bank, which yesterday lost a lengthy court battle to foreclose on her.

Queensland Supreme Court judge Philip McMurdo dismissed the bank's application to enforce mortgages Mr Perrin had taken out on the family home, held in his then wife's name, after accepting expert evidence that he had forged her signature on key documents.

Mrs Perrin, a former beauty therapist who was said by the judge to have shown no interest in business apart from "acquiring racehorses", wept when the decision came down. "It's just a relief," she said outside the court.

The Commonwealth Bank has sought to recover the $13.5m it had loaned Mr Perrin against the family's sprawling Cronin Island home in mid-2008. A failed Chinese investment had been the last straw in destroying the estimated $128m fortune Mr Perrin had amassed through the float of the Billabong franchise.

While he found Mrs Perrin was not "an entirely reliable witness", and much of the Billabong wealth had been put in her name before Mr Perrin declared bankruptcy in 2009, Justice McMurdo said "she had left all the management of their fortune to him".

Their lifestyle was "extravagant" and the judge accepted that Mrs Perrin believed they would never need to borrow again to fund their private needs.

Their marriage met difficulty when she suspected, correctly, Mr Perrin was having an affair.

Justice McMurdo accepted expert handwriting evidence that Ms Perrin's signature on the mortgage and guarantee documents for the $13.5m loan were forged by her husband. In one case, he went to the school of one of their daughters to collect a permission slip signed by her, and superimposed the signature on a purported power of attorney in his favour.

Justice McMurdo rejected the argument that their relationship was such that Mr Perrin was authorised to deal with his then wife's property and to incur financial obligations on her behalf. Mrs Perrin said she became aware of the subterfuge in January 2009, after he confessed that he was "broke" and had "done a lot of bad things", for which he would be jailed.