WA: Server vital to Firepower inquiry "sold to Cash Converters"

AAP General News (Australia)
12-08-2009
WA: Server vital to Firepower inquiry "sold to Cash Converters"

By Warwick Stanley

PERTH, Dec 8 AAP - A file server sought by liquidators of Firepower may have been sold
to a pawnbroker, the boss of the failed fuel pill company says.

Tim Johnston, who is appearing at a liquidators' hearing into the Firepower collapse,
says the file server had been kept at a house in Perth being used as an office for two
Firepower companies.

The sole director of the Centaur and Cdel companies, Gary Conwell, who was Firepower's
Perth operations manager, was in possession of the server when the company went into administration
in July last year, the Federal Court hearing in Perth was told.

Richard Douglas, for the liquidators, said it had later gone missing after being given
to an associate of Mr Johnston, Berge Koopelian.

Mr Johnston said he could not recall whether he had authorised Mr Koopelian to take
the server before the company went into liquidation in October 2008.

"I was in London trying to arrange funds and negotiate a settlement with people trying
to knock the company over," Mr Johnston said.

He agreed the server was part of an attempt to salvage the company, but could not explain
why Mr Conwell had taken the server to his house as part of that rescue.

"I don't know why it ended up at his house," he said.

Mr Douglas said Mr Johnston's Melbourne-based lawyers, Varrasso and Associates, had
written to the liquidator Bryan Hughes in October, telling him the server would be delivered
"as soon as practicable after inquiries are made as to its ownership".

They would be "removing any information to which you are not entitled" and this information
would be kept in storage, the minute said.

Mr Johnston said he did not recall directing his lawyers to pass on this message.

In a letter to Mr Hughes on December 27 last year, Varrasso and Associates said they
had located the server and it could be expected to reach his office in the new year.

In January, Varrasso and Associates ceased to act for Mr Johnston.

The man behind the Firepower collapse, which cost investors about $100 million, told
the court the server by then was in the hands of Mr Koopelian.

He said he had asked Mr Koopelian about the server's whereabouts.

"He said he was owed money so he sold it to Cash Converters," Mr Johnston said.

He said he thought it had been sold in Queensland but had no other information as to
where it could be found.

AAP was/jnb/de

KEYWORD: FIREPOWER SERVER (PIX AVAILABLE)

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