Intabill facing collapse, leaving gambling sites owed tens of millions?
Controversial Brisbane headquartered payments gateway, Intabill, may be facing collapse in the wake of a Supreme Court of Queensland action over
alleged non payment of funds owed to leading online poker sites.
Initial press reports said that Intabill owed four big poker sites, including Pokerstars.net, some $30million.
A more recent report, in the Brisbane Courier Mail, suggests that the amount being claimed in the court action is $52million, comprised of $43 million in outstanding payments, and accrued interest.
The Courier-Mail said the court action had begun on the 25th of May and was initiated by Kolyma Corporation AVV, said to be the owner of the world’s second most popular poker site
Full Tilt .
Reportedly, the court action names both Intabill and its two principals, Daniel Tzvetkoff and Con Sciacca as respondents.
More precisely, as Intabill is, formally, a foreign company, being incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, the court action names as respondent a company known as BT Projects Pty Ltd.
(BT Projects is thought to be the Australian company that facilitates the operations of Intabill’s Brisbane administrative headquarters. Australian Casino News reports that Tzvetkoff and Scacca are co-directors of BT Projects Pty Ltd, along with Canadian company - Rendel Investments.)
The news will come as no surprise to some although last year Tzvetkoff, in particular, gave no indication that he might be short of cash and, indeed, exactly the opposite.
Not only was he reportedly driving around town in a Black Lamborghini, but he personally bought into Zuri - a glitzy Fortitude Valley nightclub, and paid a reported $28million for a Gold Coast property.
Intabill too, seemed ready to reveal more and more information about its operations, little of which had formerly been known here in Australia.
A PR company was engaged and media releases began going out describing the company as “a leading global ecommerce business.”
Indeed, in March the company appeared to be well on the road to respectability, announcing the employment of a former local PayPal chief, Andrew Pipolo, and former senior Westpac banker, John Lilley.
Lilley and Pipolo were said to have been engaged by a new Intabill subsidiary, IB Global.
IB Global, said Intabill, was “a special purpose vehicle [set-up] to identify and pursue acquisition targets across the ecommerce and financial services sectors”.
But in the short space of time since March, Intabill's situation has deteriorated dramatically, with down-sizing and disposals, rather than acquisitions and expansion, the order of the day.
First the company sacked nearly 100 of its staff, leaving just 20 or less to run the operations at Milton.
(Remarkably, a statement issued by the company spoke of difficulties with a financial lending business it was involved in.
But the fact that Intabill had been in the lending business had not previously been revealed, and certainly doesn’t appear to be mentioned on its web-site.)
The car-racing sponsorship also ended and reports suggest other assets, including a 27metre yacht moored on the Gold Coast, are now up for sale.
However, as we previously reported, there has always been reason for concern over the risk profile of Intabill’s business.
Whilst the company, through its PR spokesman, repeatedly denied that its operations had anything to do with online porn or online gambling,
Intabill’s own web-site made clear that the business specialized in providing payment gateway services to high-risk merchants.
“At Intabill we accept applications from all legal high risk business types, opening high risk merchant accounts through our partnerships with a network of more than 10 banks spread worldwide.”
Indeed Intabill even touted a special service that automatically keeps trying different banks until it can get a credit-card transaction approved.
None of those banks were Australian, however.
And because formally, the business wasn’t even Australian, these two facts appear to have meant that, up until now, Intabill has entirely escaped the scrutiny of Australian regulators.
eCommerce Report tried to contact Intabill for comment on the situation but the phones at the Milton office appear to be no longer being answered.
For more information go to
www.Intabill.com
See also our earlier stories
9 April 2009
19 March 2009
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