Danny Assagby is a highly successful Australian business executive, who is now, regretting the day he met and engaged with two executives from the Lifestyle Store that is in administration with debts of over $20 million and consumer asking for millions back in deposits for jobs that were never completed.

Now there are, claims of dodgy books, missing money, and damaging information being exposed by an accountant who after being asked to loan an additional $2M on top of $5M they had already borrowed insisted on seeing the books.

Assagby, the CEO and owner of Hudson Homes, and Eqiti who had loaned the two executives $5M was in his words “misled” when he facilitated the loan to Vinod David and John Kranatis to kick start a new business, initially owned by the Lifestyle Store (LSS) executives, called Theatre At Home that is also in administration.

Vinod David left and John Kranatis right.

What he now realises now is that Kranatis and Vinod David, two former bankrupts, were hopeless businessmen who knew how to spin a yarn but struggled to tell the truth.

12 months after loaning the pair the startup money for the new business, he realised that Theatre At Home was a dud, and that the revenue expectations were never going to be met.

As both LSS executives pitched their energy at trying to get Theatre At Home off the ground with what has been described as “insane business decisions” that included opening 7 stores in a matter of months, the Lifestyle store revenues started to tank because of the absence of senior executives.

After realising that the financials he had been presented with were never achievable, and more so the realisation that the Lifestyle store was also a “Financial basket case”, he moved to get his money back, or at least assets to protect his investment.

Desperate the LSS pair started pitching anyone they could to get finance in an effort to get Assagby off their backs.

This proved to be an impossible task because of their past business record and the lack of credible financial information relating to both businesses.

As this was happening Vinod David called ChannelNews to ask me for an introduction to Lionel Lee from Bing Lee, in an effort to get more money to prop up the failing business, then came a request for the telephone number of John Winning, we refused to facilitate any information to Vinod David for the purposes of a facilitating a loan as we knew the business was in trouble back in late 2022.

Ironically and despite operating on credit card debt, the Lifestyle store was seen by the AV and Audio industry as a key retailer in NSW because of the volume it delivered for suppliers.

In September 2023 as things got desperate Assagby moved to protect his invest with Vinod David presented with legal documents that would result in the Lifestyle Store assets being transferred into a new Company.

Now months after agreeing to the terms of the assets transfer, and days after the Lifestyle Store was placed into administration, solicitors for Vinod Christie have written to the administrator of Theatre at home claiming that their client was basically not aware of what he was signing when he handed over control of the assets of the LSS.

In question is what Vinod David is claiming was ‘draft’ Asset Sale Agreement between ROQO and LSSA that purports to record the sale on 6 March 2024 to LSSA of the assets of the Lifestyle Store which ROQO purportedly purchased from LSS on 11 September 2023.

He now wants the assets back despite multiple legal observers who have reviewed the documents which have been signed on multiple pages by Vinod David, advising administrators that they are “legitimate legal documents”.

Vinod David and his solicitors claim that Assagby and a new potential investor failed to deliver a an additional $2M in new funding as part of the asset transfer. Assagby claims there “Never was going to be $2M in funding” after accountants inspected the books of LSS and TAH.

First class tickets and trips overseas were expensed on the Company.

Vinod David solicitors claim that on 10 April 2024, Mr Assabgy and Danwa Pty Ltd (Danwa), without any legal basis, took steps to take possession of the stock and premises of LSS.

Danny Assabgy told ChannelNews in an exclusive interview that there is no dispute, that the Asset Sale Agreement which multiple audio and AV suppliers are keen to understand with many owed tens of thousands for stock that is now in a “secure location”, was signed in March 24, but the agreement to sell the assets, restructure the shareholding, etc, were all made in September 23 which he claims ASIC records lodged by Vinod will confirm.

“I initially attributed the delay in producing the documents to Vinod’s tardiness but now believe it may have been more deliberate”.

“I’m not sure why the relevance of the signing date is such a contentious issue given that Vinod was a party to creating the document, even responding to my email of 8 March on 11 March with very specific amendments and corrections – and he was the only party signing the Asset Sale Agreement for all entities – which clearly referred to the previous loan agreements” he said

“If Vinod believed the date was misrepresented or was in error, why did he not make that amendment to the word files I sent him? “

“His very specific and well picked-up edits also demonstrated that he had a very clear understanding of the agreements, that he was finally signing, and it was also what he had agreed to many months earlier”.

According to sources and confirmed by Vinod David another investor was approached to put two million dollars into the business last year.

Arthur S is an accountant, successful businessman and a resident of Mosman.

We know his full name, but we are deliberately refraining from naming him.

Aware of the problems associated with the repayment of the $5M loan he insisted that before investing additional money into the struggling business, which Vinod David was telling ChannelNews was doing well but “Needed additional money to fund an expansion of the business” which was a lie, insisted on getting access to the books of both LSS and TAH.

After reviewing the financials in March 2024, which he claims had not been updated since September 2023 he realised that the books of the Company LSS had “never been setup properly from inception”, he also questioned previous entries.

At this stage the concept was that with the injection of the $2M all the assets would be transferred into a new business Lifestyle Store Australia Pty Ltd; the shareholders would have been Arthur S who would own 2% of the shares Danny Assagby via Travolta Holdings owning 35% and a new business LTR Group which was controlled by Vinod David and John Kranatis with the two owning 63% of the shares.

The business never eventuated, and documentation was never signed after questions were raised following an extensive review of the business by the potential new investor, this information was passed on to Danny Assagby as there was evidence of trading while insolvent.

Theatre At Home Projections generated by Vinod David and John Kranastis

Documents seen by ChannelNews claim that Arthur’s investigation into the company’s affairs led to claims of damaging information relating to the possibility of tax fraud, misappropriation of company funds, misrepresentation of company’s financial viability, misappropriated customer deposits, fire-sale of assets marked down by 70% over several months with the revenue not bookkept.

It was also revealed that Vinod David had obtained a $200k loans at 80% pa interest rates.

Also discovered according to an email trail seen by ChannelNews were significant non-deposited cash payments, luxury motor vehicles being paid from the company, personal shopping expenses and restaurant bills including the purchase of a $600,000 Porsch Turbo.

“The conclusion was that this was a clearly insolvent group of companies” according to Assagby.

This led to Danny Assagby via one of the Companies he controlled issuing a notice under the loan agreement, to take possession of the Roqo owned assets.

“Upon receiving the notice, Vinod asked if i was willing to sell the Roqo assets to him” Assagby claimed.

“I said yes, but he failed to come up with an offer”.

At this stage he decided to call in the administrators.

Assagby said that Vinod David willingly handed over the keys to all the premises, including the LSS showroom, he then paid an employee to recode the security systems to try and protect the stock.

He claims that two days after securing the assets, Vinod offered to “help deal with those assets”.

Communicating via email Vinod David offered to introduce a new buyer for the LSS stock that had been secured by Assagby.

That buyer according to Assagby was “George, Someone from Busisoft”.

“I did not want to deal with the sale of the assets, only secure them from a fire sale, so I did not go ahead with any deal.”

“I suggested that the potential buyer discuss buying the stock with the Administrator”.

ChannelNews has seen some of the analysis of the LSS and TAH books and they are not pretty reading with questions raised over information provided to the Westpac Bank as to the performance of the business.

We have no knowledge of any insider trading, manipulation of financials, or information provided to financial organisations to try and get loans by Vinod David and John Kranatis, other than what has been claimed by organisations that loaned them money, reviewed their partial accounts and after doing so placed Theatre At Home into administration.

Three weeks after TAH was placed into administration Vinod David called in the administrators for The Lifestyle Store.