He has maintained this even while he was spending more than $30,000 a month on gambling accounts.

"Nobody ever is going to freeze my assets on nonsense claims," Endresz said when asked about the court's restraint orders.

For nine years, Appendix B in the federal Budget papers showed a $4.3 billion contingent liability. That was a failed legal claim by Endresz.

A matter of trust

With as much as $40 million lost to taxpayers in total costs, the saga shows the ludicrous ease with which debtors like Endresz game the legal system to escape bankruptcy, despite devastating court judgments against them.

It's all a matter of trust, Endresz, 54, told the Financial Review. "If I'm acting as a trustee, I can't be attacked on assets.

"Nobody will ever touch assets that I'm holding under trust."


Everything he does, whether it's paying for the groceries at Safeway, or his vet's bill, is held in trust.

"I've got an online TAB betting account – that's a declaration of trust as well," he says. "I buy a lottery ticket. That's a declaration of trust as well."

Actually his bookies get a lot of trust. In a three-month period Endresz transferred $75,000 from his CBA cheque account to Sportingbet Australia, paid $3792 to Ozlotto, withdrew $2000 from ATMs at Flemington racecourse, and $23,000 from ATMs at Crown casino.

He's never the one who owes the money. But just whom is all this in trust for?

"That's up to you to find the information!" he crows to the Financial Review. But that's not what he says to his Cook Islands bank.

Scam on top of a scam

Endresz's secret offshore empire is revealed in the Paradise Papers, a huge tranche of documents obtained by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and accessed through the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Endresz, 54, has spent a sizeable portion of his adult life under banning orders obtained by ASIC. He was born in Sydney after his father Jozsef emigrated from Hungary. The family moved to Albury, from where the young Endresz carved out a career as a corporate gadfly in the 1980s, on the edge of deals with Alan Bond, Joe Gutnick and John Elliott.


He's not a shy man. He speaks volubly of the great injustices done to him, dating all the way back to 1990, when the ASX suspended his Emu Hill Gold Mines NL after he launched a bizarre $7.5 million rights issue, half of which would go into a lottery with $3.75 million paid as prizes to 12 lucky shareholders. He called it Emu Lotto.

Three years later Endresz made history as the first Australian to be convicted of market manipulation, for ramping the share price of Emu Hill (now renamed CTC Resources NL) before it was delisted.

With a five-year ban from acting as a director, he set up a partnership, Davis Samuel Corporate Advisory Services with Melbourne lawyer Peter Cain, still operating out of Albury while sponsoring sporting teams.

The ban had just expired in 1998 when David Muir, a consultant working for the federal government, embezzled $8.725 million, transferring the money to CTC Resources and Davis Samuel.

Part of the funds were then used to take control of a WA mining company, Hallmark Gold, which was then stripped of cash. It was a scam on top of another scam.

This produced two investigations – one by the federal government when it realised money had gone missing, and a second by ASIC into how cash was stripped from both Hallmark Gold and CTC Resources.

It was another huge injustice, as Endresz tells it, explaining at length the excellent value Hallmark, as a Perth company, received from sponsoring Endresz's NBL team, the Newcastle Falcons, as part of payments to Endresz interests.

Sense of injustice


His burning sense of injustice had led Endresz to take a full-page ad in the Financial Review in November 1998, a month after receiving Muir's embezzled funds, criticising Trevor Sykes for blowing the whistle on his Hillmark Gold deals in his Pierpont column.

In January 1999 the Commonwealth began legal action to recover the embezzled funds, beginning with an asset freeze.

"Mr Allan Endresz has no personal assets other than those which are the subject of a restraining order initially made in January 1999 by the Supreme Court of the ACT in favour of the Commonwealth," the Federal Court of Appeal noted in 2015, based on his sworn evidence.

"Injunctive orders were made that, in effect, froze the personal assets of the applicant … These injunctions had the effect of inhibiting the applicant's capacity to conduct his business ventures or deal with personal assets; including his residential home in Albury, New South Wales. Those injunctions are still extant."

But it wasn't that simple. Only assets traced to the missing funds were frozen, and most of the money couldn't be found.

Days before the initial civil trial to retrieve the Commonwealth funds began on June 10, 1999, Endresz began moving assets to the Cook Islands, where asset protection trusts are beyond the reach of Australian courts, the Paradise Papers show.

On May 12, 1999, Asiaciti set up the Palmerston Superannuation Fund as an international trust in Rarotonga. The assets for the trust came from Endresz's major Australian holding company, Corporate Trading Co Pty Ltd.

The beneficiary of the trust? Allan Endresz.


'He would search for ways of avoiding it'

On March 2, 2000, Asiaciti set up two Cook Islands companies: Ezybonds Inc, which was owned by the second new company, Nevah Holdings Inc, which was owned by Endresz.

In the following decade Endresz would build Ezybonds into an international money order business, with a British-listed arm, Ezybonds Plc.

Back in the courts, Muir was sentenced to seven and a half years in October 2001 for defrauding the Commonwealth, and another two years in 2006 for the Hallmark Gold scam.

Criminal charges against Endresz for bribing Muir to embezzle funds and for his part in the Hallmark Gold affair were dismissed.

In separate proceedings ASIC won orders in 2002 preventing Endresz and his parents acting as directors.

Acting Justice Michael Foster described Endresz's "general attitude to regulatory restrictions. Rather than seeking to comply with the law, he would search for ways of avoiding it."

But appeals meant it was not until 2007 that a 14-year banning order was imposed on Endresz, with a fine plus costs of about $1 million. He didn't pay it.


Ferocious legal strategy

In April 2001, Endresz told the Financial Review that a company called Penman Inc had put up $150,000 to fund his legal fees. Penman was registered in the Cook Islands, but Endresz said he knew little else about it.

Cook Island records show that Penman Inc was registered on January 10, 2001, using bearer shares – that is, whoever actually holds the share certificates controls the company. It was immediately renamed JR Henry Plc.

Endresz still maintains he doesn't know why the initial mystery owner funded the Endresz legal case. But Endresz admits he did take over JR Henry Plc.

JR Henry then acquired Corporate Trading Co, the Endresz parent company that had set up the Palmerston Trust.

This meant a major portion of Endresz's companies were now ultimately owned by his Cook Islands company, which had funded his legal defence.

Endresz pursued a ferocious legal strategy. He ran a High Court challenge to the way judges are appointed, he accused the government lawyers of abusive process and attempting to pervert the course of justice, and even claimed one judge fell asleep during a trial.

He claimed that he had accepted the millions transferred by Muir in 1998 in good faith, and had no idea that it was not a bona fide investment by the government.


In his counter-claim, he argued that it was so easy for Muir to embezzle the money that he, Endresz, was the real victim of the crime, not taxpayers. So he was entitled to compensation: in fact, to $4.3 billion of compensation.

Evidence 'beggars belief'

ASIC first tried to bankrupt Endresz in 2002. But that claim was set aside, as were all the claims that followed, first while Endresz appealed the ASIC case to the High Court, and then because he had his $4.3 billion counter-claim before the courts.

In August 2013, Justice Refshauge in the ACT Supreme Court dropped the boom on Endresz in a series of judgments, finding he owed the government $18.6 million out of a total of $22 million in accrued damages, plus legal costs estimated around $17 million.

Refshauge dismissed Endresz's counter-claim, finding that it was "beyond belief" that Endresz did not know the funds from Muir in 1998 were improperly obtained. The judge found Endrez's evidence was "incredible" and "beggars belief".

Justice Refshauge found "little weight can be given to this evidence without some independent confirmation, of which there was none".

Now, after years of trying to bring a bankruptcy action against Endresz for the unpaid fines and costs, ASIC must have thought success was near.

In August 2014 Justice Pagone ruled that Endresz was officially bankrupt … only to see Endresz, representing himself seven months later before the Federal Court of Appeal, convince Justices Edmonds, Gordon and Beach to reverse Pagone's ruling and adjourn the bankruptcy action.


Endresz should be given the opportunity to mount an appeal on his court case, the judges decided.

This would restart the clock on calculating any act of bankruptcy, which could disadvantage ASIC. But the judges regarded the risk as minimal given the 1999 restraining order, and on Endresz's sworn evidence that his only asset was his mortgaged family home.

'A great little bank in the Cook Islands'

In contrast, in early 2013 Endresz had provided a signed document for Capital Security Bank in Rarotonga that stated he was "founder and owner of Ezybonds Global Payment and Splitlock Data Protection".

Asked to detail personal wealth, the document states, just above Endresz's signature: "Shares & Property in Australia. AUD$50 million."

Endresz confirms the Capital Security Bank accounts: "CFB, yeah, a great little bank in the Cook Islands."

But when he told the bank he owned $50 million in assets, what he meant was that he held assets qualified by declarations of trust.

"I'm an individual trading as a trustee in partnerships, or as a general partner which is why I own the assets on trust," he said.


He has at least five Australian limited partnerships that operate this way.

"I became the single trustee across the board," he said.

The assets are owned by the mystery beneficiary of all those trusts, the one he won't name.

Difficulty with identification

The difficulty is that the Know Your Customer forms Endresz signed to open accounts in the Cook Islands name him as beneficiary and make no reference to money held on trust. If they did, he would have been forced to identify the mystery man.

One figure who has given Endresz financial assistance is Wodonga lawyer John Potter.

"He's been a family friend who has helped us out financially," Endresz said. "He paid for good legal advice."

In October 2011, Endresz instructed Asiaciti that Wodonga lawyer John Potter and his company Rainforest Pty Ltd were to be issued a 25 per cent stake in Ezibonds Inc, in return for $1 million.


Potter told the Financial Review his financial assistance to Endresz was confidential: "I was dealing with Mr Endresz in his capacity as the duly authorised representative of Ezybonds Inc".

In his 2015 bankruptcy appeal, Endresz told the court that while he had no assets he was the general partner of Ezybonds (Pacific) Ltd Partnership, which he could access to pay his debts by selling some shares.

In fact, the judges concluded, since Endresz had no assets, "it is apparent that the appellants' inability to pay the judgment debts in favour of ASIC arose from the freezing orders" in 1999.

It was ASIC's fault he had no money to pay his debt.

'We know we can win it'

They accepted Endresz's undertaking that he would do all he could to prosecute his appeal "with due diligence".

But it didn't work out that way.

In June 2016 the ACT Court of Appeal dismissed the Endresz defendants' appeal "for want of prosecution". They had failed repeated demands to file documents, while in several interlocutory hearings none of them had turned up, or even telephoned in.


Endresz claims it was a tactical decision, reflecting his claim that the cause had no substance.

Even now, supposedly with the last appeal over, Endresz won an adjournment to a new bankruptcy action, so that he could seek leave to appeal to the High Court. The High Court refused.

Endresz's bankruptcy case is back before Judge Neville on May 17. But Endresz is in ebullient mode.

He is talking about a new High Court challenge, to force them to hear his appeal, under Section 75(3) of the Constitution.

"We know we can win it. We know it will be a disaster if I can put my foot in the door."

And damages? With interest it's "well in excess of $4.3 billion today", he said. "It racks up pretty quick."

Of course, there's the bankruptcy action. To make this historic case he'll need another adjournment.

Trust me.