By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
A BUSINESSMAN has said he owes more than $20 million to Australian Tax Office and other creditors after the shut down of his furniture stores on Princes Highway, Dandenong.
John Apostolidis, director of Yarrabee Investments – which owns Leather Lounges Direct and Dekabu Leather – said he was not a dishonest person and that his tax liabilities of more than $20 million were a “secondary issue”.
“They only came in lately,” he said.
Mr Apostolidis said his main trouble was with an insurer, after he lost more than $7 million in a business fire in 2007.
He said he had lost a court battle with his insurer, which refused his claim because he had failed to notify them of his criminal record.
He said his only crime was an assault for an “unfortunate fist-fight”.
“If I steal from a bank or defrauded a credit card company I’m a dishonest person.
“But my insurer says I should have notified them.
“The reality is I lost. This is one of those f***-up situations.”
Mr Apostolidis, who was recently taken to the Supreme Court by the Federal Commissioner of Taxation, said his taxation case had closed.
“I’ve received a letter that I had to be evicted from my house and properties because of the taxation bill.
“It’s psychological. One day, you’re worth a lot of money, the next you’re on the street.
“People don’t know about this yet – it’s embarrassing.”
He denied his company was in receivership “at this stage”.
Star News Group, the publisher of this newspaper, is seeking money owed by Mr Apostolidis’s closed-down stores for a series of advertisements, including ‘closing down sale’ promotions.
His company Yarrabee Investments ran foul of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for a series of newspaper advertisements in 2009.
The ACCC found Yarrabee had used “non-genuine” recommended-retail prices as a comparison for their “now only” prices for mattresses.
In 2010, the Australian Taxation Office became an applicant to a protracted legal property settlement dispute between Mr Apostolidis and his former de facto partner, as well as freezing his and his companies’ assets.
During the initial Supreme Court trial Justice Kim Hargrave said Mr Apostolidis had been convicted of “a number of criminal offences, many involving violence, threats of violence, and abusive language”.
According to one of the case appeals in 2011, the ATO issued tax liability assessments of more than $14 million.
Mr Apostolidis’s tax liability and debts to other creditors were at this stage “substantially” exceeding his assets.
