Half billion-dollar Bill: accused fraudster living the good life in Greece

For eight months, Bill Papas has been silent. Accused of orchestrating one of the biggest frauds in Australian history — an alleged $500 million swindle of Westpac and the local branches of two global lenders, Sumitomo and Societe Generale — the colourful businessman and soccer identity has evaded banks, liquidators and even an arrest warrant.

He has not responded to media inquiries either. But on Sunday, in response to promotional material for a joint investigation by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes into the collapse of his business Forum Finance, Papas finally broke his silence.

“The reporting and opinions publicly advanced about Forum and other entities have been formulated without the benefit of a contradictor,” reads his statement, sent by defamation lawyer Rebekah Giles but attributed to Papas.

“This is because I have been deprived of the opportunity to fund any meaningful engagement with federal proceedings commenced by a well-resourced financial institution.

“I do intend to address the matters raised at an appropriate time but for now, my primary focus is my health.”

The joint investigation reveals Papas is living the high life in Athens while dozens of investigators, former staff and victims back home, including small business owners, have been left to deal with the mess he’s left behind.

The investigation can also unmask for the first time the identity of key witnesses of the alleged fraud, from those working in the senior management ranks of his business, Forum Finance, to the foot soldiers and victims of this episode.

Papas, a former president of Sydney Olympic soccer club, fled to Greece last June just weeks before major bank Westpac lodged civil Federal Court proceedings against Forum, alleging it was the victim of a potential major fraud. That court has issued an arrest warrant for Papas in December, on contempt of court charges, for allegedly breaching freezing orders. He is yet to respond to the allegations but has long held out to investigators and contends that the matter is a misunderstanding.

Yet in the ritzy suburb of Glyfada in Athens, the investigation found Papas dining out at a flash cafe with a business associate. He is also spotted smiling and laughing and casually roaming the streets with Australian girlfriend Louise Agostino.

Smartly dressed in designer jeans, a black puffer vest and fitted t-shirt, he carries shopping bags after a buy-up at upmarket fashion house Hugo Boss while Agostino clings to his arm as a Chanel handbag swings by her side.

Papas moves freely between his apartments in Thessaloniki overlooking the Aegean Sea and hotels in Athens.

It’s a chilling contrast with the situation in Australia, where liquidators have sold Papas’ multimillion-dollar home in Sydney and are selling his $12 million-plus waterfront property on the Central Coast in a bid to recoup funds.

From Xerox to hero

The story of Papas’ rise to the league of business big shots began in the southern Sydney suburb of Rosebery in the 1990s when, as a young truck driver, he was given a sales job in a small printer-leasing business.

Papas went out on his own in 2011, setting up Forum Group, a company that would dominate the printer-leasing industry.

But it wasn’t until 2017 that a deal was struck between Forum and Westpac which transformed his fortunes and took him from Xerox to hero.

As part of this deal, Forum would not only provide equipment to Westpac’s big clients, but it would also look after the paperwork.

It was around then Papas realised he could inflate these contracts by changing a requirement for tens of machines to hundreds. To do this, he allegedly began forging signatures of executives at Westpac’s blue-chip clients. This included some of the biggest companies in Australia such as Coles, Westfield shopping malls owner Scentre, the country’s biggest landlord Australian Leisure and Hospitality Group and heavy equipment dealer WesTrac.

But there was a genius in Papas’ alleged plan. To avoid detection, Forum allegedly met the payments on the loans in the names of these blue-chip clients, meaning the customer never knew of the loan and the bank thought it legitimate.

The hundreds of millions of allegedly fleeced funds were stuffed into a “black box”, growing to amass more than $500 million. This stash of cash allowed Papas to buy a range of businesses to expand his empire. Soon Forum went from renting out photocopiers and printers to offering solar panel services and leasing waste digesters through its business Iugis.

The endgame was to use the cash to prop up Iugis and transform it into a global behemoth, one day worthy of listing as a public company on the ASX or London’s AIM. Iugis even sponsored UK Premier League powerhouse Liverpool Football Club.

Business was booming, or so it appeared. Papas drove luxury cars and jet-setted around the world. The company’s culture was work-hard, play-hard, with teams rewarded with helicopter rides and long lunches on boats. Forum even sponsored Papas’ race car-driving aspirations.

By midway through last year, Papas’ high life came crashing down when one of Westpac’s customers – the Kerry Stokes-controlled equipment supplier WesTrac – began asking questions about these contracts. Emails obtained by The Age and Herald earlier this year show executives at several of Westpac’s corporate clients telling Westpac’s financing team that the contracts appeared faked and the signatures apparently forged.

‘The money isn’t there’

Liquidators and forensic investigators from advisory firm McGrathNicol now believe they know where the money in Papas’ black box came from – the banks. They have also worked through millions of documents to piece together where the money allegedly siphoned off by Papas has gone.

In his first interview about the investigation, McGrathNicol partner and Forum liquidator Jason Ireland describes the alleged fraud as the biggest he’s ever seen and predicts creditors will see only a few cents in the dollar of a return – if any.

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“There’s a real chance that the shortfall is the entire amount … that was taken,” Ireland says.

“It’ll be hundreds of millions, and that’s because the money is not sitting anywhere. Because so much of the money went back to paying what looked like to be fraudulent contracts and then funding loss-making businesses, the money isn’t there.

“Hundreds of millions of dollars went into the business, just paying the operating costs of the business. And then amounts of money, maybe $50 million into properties, and then other sort of lifestyle assets – cars, yachts, jet-skis, trailers to carry those various things, racing cars.”

McGrathNicol’s investigation has found that Papas allegedly used a secret entity to funnel the profits of the fraud into offshore businesses and assets including the expansion of his business into Greece and the purchase of the Xanthi Football Club.

One man, management consultant-for-hire Nigel Watts, came close to discovering the secret entity before being ushered out of Forum’s offices with a friendly goodbye.

After Watts met Papas through one of his big business clients, Papas recruited Watts as a consultant to help integrate Forum’s web of businesses. Watts, whose client list includes several top ASX 50 companies, crafted the group’s five core values, with “integrity” ironically being number one.

Papas had loved Watts’ work and trusted him for the two years they worked together between 2018 and 2020. But Papas suddenly ended Watts’ contract after Watts began reviewing Forum’s financial systems on his initiative after staff had complained of clunky systems.

Watts’ review suggested Forum introduce a new consolidated system that could give staff a bird’s-eye view of the company’s flow of funds.

Critically, Watts had no idea this plan would expose the hundreds of millions of allegedly fraudulent dollars flowing in from Westpac customers.

When Papas returned from a European holiday and read Watts’ report, the consultant says he was shown the door. “We’ve really valued how you’ve helped us grow, but we’re going to take it from here,” Watts recalls Papas saying.

In hindsight, Watts realises he is perhaps one of the few people who came close to discovering the alleged fraud.

“It’s one of those things where you look back now, you go, ‘okay, that was the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle’. When the accusations, and things came out in the press, for me, it was like, ‘okay, I get it. I actually get what’s happened now’.”

‘It’s destroyed my faith’

While the problems at Forum were not apparent to many of its large corporate customers, employees and advisers, some small business owners already knew to be wary of the company.

Quantum Transport Solutions chief executive Deb Roberts is one of those people. Forum left her with a damaged credit history and $180,000 out of pocket.

In 2016, Roberts’ business enlisted Forum to develop a software program to help improve the efficiency of her trucking business.

Roberts says there was supposed to be no loans or finance attached to the project and instead Quantum was expecting to pay Forum in cash instalments – but only once the software program had passed its initial set-up stage.

Instead, she says Forum began charging her before any of the performance hurdles were met and the software program Forum promised to develop was never completed and not fit for purpose.

Roberts later found that credit checks had been placed against the name of her business as a result of her dealings with Forum despite no payments being missed and no loans being attached to the project.

“It’s cost me a lot of money. It’s destroyed my faith. I’m very cautious with loans.”

She is unsparing in her assessment of Forum. “What can you say? I mean, how do people get away with this? How do they have no consideration?”

“Ruthless industry”

But for Stuart Burnett, who worked as a foot soldier in Forum’s sales empire for eight months in 2018, Roberts’ experience is hardly surprising.

Forum’s sales team was the engine room of the business, and those on the front lines were under immense pressure to push contracts out the door.

Burnett says the culture was “ruthless” and “cut throat” and there was expectation each salesman would bring in $100,000 per month.

The hard work was rewarded. Within weeks of joining Forum, Burnett was treated to an all-expenses paid trip to Tweed Heads. Thinking back, what stands out is how much the team, Burnett included, adored Papas.

“People were in awe of him and what he created from nothing,” he says. “I was lost in, ‘wow, look at all this that’s happening around. These guys are really going for it’.”

But over time, Burnett says the pressure sales tactics made him uncomfortable. Fine print in contracts would sting customers after a few years.

“You’ll sign someone up to a five-year contract; three years in, they’re paying twice as much.”

Eventually, it became too much and he quit, telling Papas on the way out: “You’re building something here that I’m not on board with.”