Mayfair 101 Managing Director James Mawhinney has been granted leave by the Federal Court to cross-examine the liquidator who labelled his company “insolvent since inception” as he prepares for the re-running of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s case against him later in the year.
On this day three years ago, the corporate regulator secured a 20-year ban against Mr Mawhinney dealing in financial products, only to have it overturned on appeal by unanimous decision of the Full Court in October 2022. However, rather than allowing the appeal and discontinuing the case, the Full Court remitted the matter to be heard again by a new Federal Court judge.
Earlier this month ASIC sought to abandon key evidence – including an expert report from Deloitte insolvency practitioner Jason Tracy and affidavits from ASIC staff Dayle Buckley and Hugh Copley – from the remitted case.
Today, Justice David O’Callaghan held that Mr Mawhinney could apply for leave to cross-examine Jason Tracy, Dayle Buckley and Hugh Copley at the October remitter trial.
Justice O’Callaghan ruled that Mr Mawhinney be allowed to cross-examine the liquidator of M101 Nominees Pty Ltd, Said Jahani, who wrote a report in September 2020 relied upon by ASIC to have the company wound up. 128 noteholders who subscribed for $62 million worth of debt instruments have been without principal and interest payments for four years after Mr Jahani gave evidence that the business model was unsustainable.
The Court dismissed Mr Mawhinney’s application to strike-out various paragraphs from ASIC’s statement of claim and ruled that several thousand pages of evidence used or tendered in ASIC’s ‘misleading or deceptive’ proceeding, known as VID228/2020 also be excluded from the upcoming trial.
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