Luc Longley’s money man Gui De Castro fighting to save latest advice vehicle PMM after Car One crash

The besieged former financial adviser of basketball great Luc Longley is fighting to keep his flagship company afloat.

Just a year after a Victorian court put Gui De Castro’s one-time advice vehicle into liquidation, he had a lawyer in the WA Supreme Court on Wednesday trying to stop liquidators being appointed to his current advice company PMM Group Pty Ltd.

Armed with a $1.09 million Supreme Court judgment secured last September, former client Damien Rhodes and investor Ross Cargeeg are pushing for PMM and its parent company My Two Boys to be put into liquidation for failing to pay.

Mr Rhodes launched his legal action in July last year, within days of Mr Longley’s legal advisers at Bennett & Co filing a Supreme Court writ against Mr De Castro and his former advice company Car One Financial.

The Longley action relates to his family trust company making a $1m investment in a long-stalled apartment development.

The Longley family trust company Sandia Holdings claims that Mr De Castro and Car One failed to act in its best interest in 2015 when it was making its investment in the planned redevelopment of the former KFC North Perth site.

Mr Longley, who has been busy this year as special adviser to Wednesday night’s NBL premiership winners Sydney Kings, has not pushed the action along.

Car One has been in the hands of liquidators since September 2. Even with no value in the Longley claim, the liquidator has estimated the failed company would have a $2m-plus shortfall.

Mr De Castro’s battles with Mr Rhodes became public in August last year when Justice Jenni Hill granted an injunction freezing $750,000 of assets linked to Mr De Castro, PMM and My Two Boys.

She said she accepted evidence that Mr De Castro and PMM have “limited assets”.

Justice Hill pointed to allegations by Ms Rhodes and Mr Cargeeg that Mr De Castro had failed to transfer shares in listed companies Sprintex and PYX Resources that they had bought from My Two Boys.

My Two Boys and PMM Group soon after struck a settlement deed with Mr Rhodes and Mr Cargeeg that underpinned the $1.09m judgment stamped on September 3.

Fighting applications for the companies to be put into liquidation, Mr De Castro’s lawyer Chris William said on Wednesday that his clients had a series of grievances about how Mr Rhodes and Mr Cargeeg had acted in pursuit of their claims.

Mr Williams said Mr De Castro had estimated he had suffered $6m of damage to his business because of the injunction, which caused a loss of key staff and a termination of a business lease.

He said the potential damages claim outstripped the total debt that underpinned the winding-up action against PMM and My Two Boys.

Arguing the companies should not be wound-up, Mr Williams said My Two Boys owned an apartment in Applecross that Mr De Castro estimated was worth almost $1.7m and had struck an agreement to sell its stake in the unit trust behind the Ibis Styles hotel in East Perth for more than $1m.

The lawyer for Mr Rhodes and Mr Cargeeg said Mr De Castro had provided no details of the buyer of the Ibis stake, a transaction where the first payment would not come until August and would not be completed until 2023.

Lawyer Craig Gough said Mr De Castro had not provided any basis for what various shares and properties were worth and had “plucked out of the air” the $6m estimate for the supposed losses from the injunction.

Mr Gough said the cash flow of the company was based on nothing more than assertions by Mr De Castro. “If that detail is sufficient for insolvency, then anything could be,” he said.