8ball Do you know what % POT ZR is running at on the exotics?

More than 6 IMO

http://www.afr.com/p/national/money_magic_makes_billions_disappear_oHyu9FiLwUcuPzefN3zg7O

Hard Hearted Hannah Low doesn't seem to be buying the hobby angle!

Adelaide mum Elisabeth Steicke takes on billion-dollar international betting syndicate, Punters Club

    Penny Debelle
    The Advertiser
    September 14, 2012 10:00PM


SHE is the Adelaide mother lifting the veil of secrecy from the mysterious billion-dollar international betting syndicate known as the Punters Club.

Elisabeth Steicke, who lives in Burnside, is chasing up to $50 million of the gambling fortune made by her ex-husband as a member of the club.

So far, Ms Steicke has spent more than $10.5 million in her attempts.

The South Australian Supreme Court has been told the money was spent on lawyers, investigators and forensic accountants investigating Mr Steicke's assets and accounts in Australia, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Malta.

The sum includes a legal bill of $4 million.

Her ex-husband, former Murray Bridge man David Steicke, who has remarried and lives in Hong Kong, is thought to have spent about $26 million fighting her.

Ms Steicke, 50, who is raising their severely autistic teenage son feels "abandoned and defrauded" according to documents presented to the Supreme Court and believes her ex-husband is hiding his considerable assets from her.
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Since their separation in February 2005, Ms Steicke has been pursuing a sizeable chunk of what she believes is his $100 million fortune made from the elusive international betting syndicate she helped set up.

Her problem is that the Punters Club members are brilliant and eccentric individuals whose dealings are so secret the files on Mr Steicke's laptop she retrieved after he left were encrypted.

Their operations are said by her legal team to be no more than "a loose anarchic arrangement between four principals". They kept no books or records and outsourced the betting to others.

The South Australian link to the Punters Club is Mr Steicke and the South Australian winemaker Raymond Gatt, who owns three vineyards including Eden Springs, and spends half his time in Asia where he works "in computer software development".

Head of the club is Zeljko Ranogajec, an ex-Tasmanian who has been called "the world's biggest punter". He is a card-counting genius who was once thrown out of a casino after winning $500,000 and lives on the Isle of Man. The other prominent member is Tasmanian cultural philanthropist David Walsh, who spent $80 million building the landmark Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart.

Until 2006 David Steicke had a 14.8 per cent share of the Punters Club and Elisabeth Steicke wants half, but first has to prove the existence of assets and earning of which there is virtually no traceable evidence or visible structure.

"The husband declared in 2004 that our share in The Punters Club alone was worth $150 million and we derived an income in 2004 of approximately $15 million from this asset," Ms Steicke said in an affidavit to the Supreme Court.

"The husband has since declared the asset has no value and has zero income."

Ms Steicke, who trained as a secretary, met David Steicke in 1987, the year before he and Ray Gatt began a local betting operation using complex algorithms and computer programs that make money out of layers of high-frequency bets. Thousands of bets are laid each day around the world on everything from women's tennis to American gridiron and Hong Kong horse racing. The Club's daily betting float for computerised gambling across Australia, the US, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom is $100 million, according to documents filed in the Supreme Court. Ms Steicke began to assist him with his "horse racing hobby" which in the late 1990s  after Gatt and Steicke joined forces with Walsh and Ranogajec  became the Punters Club.

Her brother, Jack Capone, for a decade ran the local betting operations from the former Gothic Hotel, Whitmore Square, and later at the Windmill Hotel, in Prospect.

In the late 1990s, the family moved to low-tax Switzerland, where Elisabeth Steicke set up a betting structure for horse racing and sports betting in the US.

Through her Italian passport, the couple was able to obtain residency and open Swiss bank accounts. She also introduced Kent Town lawyer Russell Jamison to run a lucrative betting office for the Club, known as Data Processors.

The elusive group of mathematics savants claim their betting activities are a hobby, an assessment that the Australian Tax Office once agreed with, but which it is is now challenging.

She believes she is entitled to a 50 per cent share. Pinning down Mr Steicke's assets, however, has proved a seven-year problem.

"It appears the husband and other syndicate members have taken extensive legal and accounting advice," her legal team advised.

"The structure of the Punters Club is not placed in writing, no financial statements are prepared and the majority of activities for the Punters Club are outsourced."

The couple's assets in Australia may be worth up to $10 million.

Their autistic son, now a teenager, attends a top private school and has paid carers to look after him. Ms Steicke's annual living costs, including caring for her son, amount to $5 million, according to documents.

Ms Steicke declined to comment for this story.

yeah i know 8 ball, just someone elses take. it's all interesting reading though.

so the tax dept won ?

thus my question mark jfc

surely it finishes them to some extent now that the tax dept here has their numbers

He hasn't resumed betting into the Tatts pools, through the avenue he was using pre March 2012.

Also he has given no indication that he will, at any time in the near future.

I think Tatts would know if he was betting through Norfolk Island.

Castiron 20 Oct 12 02:49 Joined: 10 May 04 | Topic/replies: 419 | Blogger: Castiron's blog
I think Tatts would know if he was betting through Norfolk Island.so the tax dept won ?

Gimme a break!

McIlwain was oblivious to this convenient cloaca.

Zeljko,

or John Wilson,

or Will Johnson.

Just watch the overly delayed TAB revenue so-called disclosures to see how much the rest of us are subsiding this philanthropist.

The facts vehemently defy the hallucination that Zeljko has ever stopped betting here.

Record turnover!

What gives?

Whether it's Norfolk Island or Isle of Man or Belarus.

His imprint registers on every dud dividend!

jfc, I have messaged you.

Bumped to provide remedial reading for Rip Van Winkle Tilt.