Perth Glory sale in limbo as buyer faces uncertain future

The sale of Perth Glory to a self-styled cryptocurrency entrepreneur is crumbling.

Glory owner Tony Sage is in Europe to conduct “due diligence” on LTE.

The sale of Perth Glory to a self-styled cryptocurrency entrepreneur is crumbling amid revelations that the company is being sued in London and New York, and questions over the man behind the deal.

The so-called London Football Exchange Group is under fire on multiple fronts less than a fortnight after its proposed purchase of 80 per cent of Glory from owner Tony Sage was first announced.

After reports in London revealed LFE and its management are being sued by an oil trader from Turkmenistan for $2m, The Australian has learned that a US venture capital firm is also taking legal action against LFE in an ongoing case in New York.

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The frontman for LFE, who calls himself Jim Aylward, was alleged by Perth radio station 6PR to be a convicted fraudster called James Abbass Biniaz who was accused in 2010 of unlawful dealings.

Sage is still in Europe on a trip to conduct “due diligence” on the company to which bizarrely he was appointed chairman in January, but the latest revelations appear to have brought the takeover to the brink of collapse.

Entrepreneur Murat Seitnepesov is suing LFE and its executives over the alleged provision and non-repayment of loans by his company Petrochemical Logistics to LFE from 2017 to last year, in a case first reported by legal website Law360.

The businessman’s claim says he arranged for LFE executives to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos and sponsor a motor race in Baku, for which he was due to be paid $3m.

Seitnepesov further claims that in lieu of the repayment of the loans, he was given tokens in the LFE that were guaranteed to be worth at least $2.2m, but which were then devalued by the further issuance of millions more tokens late last year.

The Australian can also reveal that the LFE Group was threatened with being dissolved by the UK Registrar of Companies in October last year, before a set of accounts was published as a “dormant company” three weeks before the registrar’s deadline.

Football Federation Australia is conducting its own due diligence of the proposed takeover but seems certain to block it — assuming Sage tries to complete the deal, as more revelations appear by the day. That includes the alleged history of Aylward, who 6PR says travelled under his real name James Biniaz to a conference in China to promote LFE.

Meanwhile, Glory’s Asian Champions League game against Korean club Ulsan, scheduled for March 4, looks set to be played at an empty stadium due to the threat of coronavirus .

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH