CEO Of Dick Smith Called A Liar After Court Evidence Over Debt, Grey Imported Samsung Smartphones
The CEO of one of Australia’s most successful smartphone distributors, Roadhound was called “A Goose” by the CEO of Dick Smith after he tried to get paid on time by the retailer who for the second time in a quarter wanted to push payment out from 60 days to 90.
After hearing evidence presented in the NSW Supreme Court today the CEO of Roadhound Ben Sharma who lost $16M when Dick Smith collapsed with debts of over $400 million said “Nick Aboud is a liar, he told me time and time again we were going to get paid”.
Sharma who said that his debt with Dick Smith was “not insured” claims that Aboud is a born liar and that Dick Smith management constantly lied when he tried to get payment.
At today’s hearing in the NSW Supreme Court the court was shown an email that indicated that Dick Smith considered ‘grey marketing” with Nick Aboud writing in an email “How do we go direct, parallel import”.
At the time Dick Smith was struggling to pay suppliers with Samsung whose products Roadhound supplied cutting off credit to the retailer.
Sharma whose Company Roadhound reported $4.34M profit in December 2019 on revenues of $73M had previously written to Dick Smith indicating that in the past Roadhound had delivered “generous” credit terms in the past.
He told management that Roadhound was “not here to fund the DSE business”.
Aboud told the court that Mr Sharma had got angry with him and that he did not like the way that Sharma conducted himself.
“He was rude” Aboud said.
He claimed that when he dealt with suppliers, he was always professional and that he “expected that in return”.
He said that Dick Smith was Roadhound number one supplier.
See the Nick Aboud cross examination on the issue of Roadhound here.