How a soccer legend’s Sydney visit helped lift the lid on a club scandal

One of the biggest gaming venues in NSW is being investigated over a secret land sale, claims of hush money disguised as a golden handshake and various allegations of club officials misusing their positions for personal gain.

Club Marconi, which has 363 poker machines and makes 80 per cent of its revenue from gaming, is the subject of a long-running, covert investigation by Liquor and Gaming NSW that initially centred on a fraudulent invoice authorised by the former CEO, and the proposed sale of 30,000 square metres of club-owned land at Narellan, in Sydney’s south-west, for $16 million.

Disquiet over Club Marconi’s handling of the visit of Italian soccer player Francesco Totti drew attention to broader concerns over the club.Credit: Janie Barrett

But as the inquiry drags into its fourth year, an influential group of members from the club, based in Bossley Park in Sydney’s west, is calling for the board to be spilled and lashed out at the regulator, labelling it a “pussycat” for allowing bad behaviour to run unchecked across the club sector.

They claim that irregularities at the club – including unorthodox contracts, opaque tendering, a business relationship with a struck-off liquidator and an independent report into president Morris Licata that found he engaged in excessive expenditure – continue to emerge while the original issues that they raised with the regulator remain unaddressed.

The motion to sack the board will be put by influential club member Tony Raciti, the longstanding president of APIA Leichhardt football club, at the next annual general meeting. The date for the next AGM is yet to be set and directors have asked allies of Raciti to convince him to drop the motion.

Disgruntlement came to a head at the grand opening of Marconi’s two new synthetic soccer pitches, which cost the club $6 million and were celebrated with junior clinics and an appearance by Italian football legend Francesco Totti in May.

AS Roma players hold up Francesco Totti at Stadio Olimpico in Rome after his final match in 2017.Credit: Getty

Children whose parents had paid $200 for them to attend the clinics and meet Totti were left disappointed when they were elbowed out of the way by adult organisers and dignitaries vying for a brush with greatness.

“You made the day about yourselves and your board of directors, when it should have been about the kids getting the experience of a lifetime,” one member complained on the club’s social media page.

Another wrote: “I was so disappointed for my son. They kept telling the kids to sit down, meanwhile the adults were all over him.”

Four directors of Club Marconi – which paid $20,000 to sponsor the gala event – later attended a VIP dinner at Drummoyne waterfront restaurant Ecco Ristorante in Totti’s honour, where tickets were valued at $3000 a head. A club spokesman said they paid their own way.

Former Italian footballer Francesco Totti cuts the ribbon at Club Marconi’s new soccer pitches surrounded by club directors.Credit: Facebook

But close observers were more concerned about the financial arrangements between the club and M&U Football, the soccer academy organising the event, which secured a part-time lease over the pitches without expressions of interest being sought.

Its co-founder, Anthony Ucchino, is friends with club director Fernando Pellegrino, who attended the board meeting that considered the contract. A club spokesman said their friendship had nothing to do with the decision to award M&U the contract. Pellegrino said it was a board decision to award the contract and not his own.

Financial records show that M&U’s company secretary is disgraced liquidator David Ianuzzi, who is banned from practising as a liquidator for 10 years after a court found in 2019 that he had been “systematically negligent” in his dealings with 23 companies.

His negligence included winding up companies whose owners plainly intended to transfer the assets to new entities – known as phoenixing – to avoid paying creditors. The liquidator ban does not prevent Ianuzzi being a company secretary. Ianuzzi’s wife, Marguerite, is the sole director of a company that owns one of the four shares in M&U Football.

Club Marconi director Fernando Pellegrino (left) and president Morris Licata, at the announcement of Football Australia’s second tier competition last year.Credit: Getty Images

Club member Vince Morizzi said the contract with M&U should have gone to tender for the sake of transparency and to ensure they were getting the best deal for the club.

“Why didn’t Club Marconi do a search and find out who are the people they’re dealing with?” Morizzi said.

It was not the first time concerns have been raised about tendering at Club Marconi.

Correspondence obtained by the Herald shows members have been complaining since early last year about the tender process for the soccer pitch refurbishment, which was awarded to a civil engineering group that had no experience in such projects and quoted the highest price. The building committee had recommended going with a cheaper and more experienced contractor.

Members asked the board whether it had any pre-existing connection with the successful tenderer. The chief executive told them, and repeated to the Herald, no financial relationship existed.

Questions have also been raised about a contract with Doltone House to lease some of the club’s auditoriums, with an unusual clause that gives the venue company a 5 per cent cut of Marconi’s gross turnover when it exceeds $47 million. It was also not put to tender.

The club told the Herald that the lease was structured to benefit the club commercially. Licata, the president, has told members that Liquor and Gaming NSW was conducting its own investigations in relation to various matters including the lease.

“No doubt, if Liquor and Gaming NSW considers there has been any wrongdoing to anyone, it will take action which it considers appropriate and the club will respond,” Licata wrote to one concerned member.

Liquor and Gaming NSW said it did not comment on its investigations until findings were made.

But the club has confirmed in private correspondence the regulator began its inquiries in October 2021, months after the Herald revealed its former chief executive Tony Zappia had authorised a fraudulent invoice to the club for $13,750 by a truck-leasing company in which he owned shares, for work that was not done.

Other shareholders included the then president, fireworks manufacturer Vince Foti and several members of his family.

Foti previously told the Herald he was under no obligation to disclose to the club’s board he owned those shares.

Zappia and Foti said the purpose of the invoice was to pay for Zappia’s shares in the truck-leasing company, and the money was to be deducted from a debt that the club owed Zappia. The club made the payment but when questions were raised about the invoice, the club recovered the money.

Zappia resigned from the club after other directors caught wind of the invoice, and he left with a $300,000 payout, which included four months’ salary and all his entitlements, and a glowing reference from Foti. The regulator has been told the payment was hush money to prevent Zappia from discussing his employment. Zappia has denied this.

Liquor and Gaming has also been asking questions about the proposed sale of 30,000 square metres of land at Narellan for $16 million, without the knowledge of members, to Wetherill Park tax adviser Charlie Stillisano, who narrowly eluded bankruptcy the previous year.

Stillisano, whose construction company was also contracted to refurbish the club’s foyer, twice extended his option over the land, with a generous agreement by the club to take the cost of renewing the option off the purchase price. In 2022, he assigned the option to another entity for $22 million.

Stillisano said he had hoped to make a profit when the value of the property increased, but COVID forced a reorganisation of his affairs and he could not complete, so he transferred the option.

Morizzi, who has written numerous letters to Liquor and Gaming NSW, said the drawn-out investigation was having a detrimental effect on the club.

“The liquor board has no teeth, they’re pussycats, and, in the meantime, the club has been totally ruined,” Morizzi said.

Similar affairs were being played out in numerous clubs around NSW, Morizzi said. “The members don’t give a shit if their club loses a million dollars because it makes no difference to them, and if the club closes, they go somewhere else. There’s no accountability to anyone.”

His concerns were echoed in an independent report by former assistant police commissioner Mal Brammer into various allegations against president Licata last year. Brammer recommended that, in the interests of transparency and accountability, the board develops a complaints system for allegations raised against directors that is available for scrutiny if required.

“A fundamental anomaly … is the vagaries involved in decision-making processes by the club when investigating and satisfactorily resolving complaints and allegations made against directors,” Brammer wrote.

The club has not responded to that report. It has said it would be inappropriate, while Liquor and Gaming NSW is still investigating.

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