Webb to fight ASIC charges

Events promoter John Webb has vowed to contest criminal charges brought against him this week by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission over his role in failed expo business, Media & Events Australia Pty Ltd.

ASIC alleges that Mr Webb participated in the management of Media & Events between August 2004 and June 2005 despite being disqualified from managing corpor-ations after becoming bankrupt follow-ing the collapse of another business, Consolidated Business Media Pty Ltd.

The charges come more than two years after the regulator first began its investigations into Mr Webb’s working relationship with Media & Events.

The corporate watchdog has also charged Gregory Millar, a director of Media & Events during the period, with aiding and abetting Mr Webb.

Media & Events was put into administration about 12 months after it took on the assets of CBM. It owed creditors more than $800,000.

A spokeswoman for ASIC said the investigation into Media & Events commenced some time after the company went into external administration in June 2005.

Mr Millar and Mr Webb have a well-established working relationship.

Mr Millar was general manager at Mr Webb’s CBM business before it went into liquidation in the middle of 2004 under debts of $5 million.

Mr Millar resurfaced as the sole director of Media & Events in 2004, with the business taking ownership of CBM’s expo business in the same month that CBM called in the liquidators.

Mr Webb found a place within Mr Millar’s Media & Events, and also in Australian Corporate Exhibitions, another business name held by Mr Millar.

The pair are promoting the Singleton Mining & Industry Week to be held in NSW on August 9 to 10.

Mr Webb told WA Business News this week that he had been sales manager with Media & Events and was now the sales manager with Australian Corporate Exhibitions.

He said he had not been involved in the management of Media & Events.

“ASIC have got it wrong,” Mr Webb said. “This is just a witch-hunt.

“There is no truth to any of the allegations. It has taken them three years to get to this point and they felt they have to do something. This is McCarthyism. They have too much money and time on their hands.”

Mr Webb said he became aware of the charges three weeks ago when he received a telephone call from an ASIC representative.  He said he would hire a Queen’s Counsel to help him fight the charges.

Mr Millar also denied any wrongdoing and said he too would be employing a QC.

The matter was brought before the Perth Magistrates on Friday and returns to the court on June 29.

Mr Webb is no stranger to the legal process. In September 2003, WA Business News reported that Mr Webb and his CBM business were at the centre of several legal actions relating to the sale of the company’s events business to Exibit Exhibitions and Publishing in 1999.

The legal action related to claims of deceptive conduct, contract breaches and debts from warranty.

ASIC was also involved in an investigation of CBM, with its National Insolvency Coordination Unit concluding a three-month inquiry into the business after receiving undertakings from the company’s directors that satisfied its concerns.

WA Business News reported in March 2005 that CBM undertook to ASIC that it would improve its financial reporting, sell a division of its business, and auction a property owned by Mr Webb’s wife and inject the proceeds into the business.

CBM collapsed about three months after the undertakings were made.

WA Business News also reported in June 2005 that a Media & Events administrator’s report showed Mr Webb and his wife, Denise, benefited from payments of almost $200,000 from the expo company during the year before it collapsed.