The founder of a funeral insurance company that targeted vulnerable Aboriginal families and collapsed, leaving thousands of mostly low-income people without the means to pay for their funerals, collected more than $20m in tax-free income from the business through a complex web of offshore companies.
The New Zealand-based businessman Ron Pattenden accumulated the millions from the operations of the Aboriginal Community Benefit Fund (ACBF), later called Youpla, over 10 years from 2010, and continued to make money from it even after he sold it to new operators, Guardian Australia can reveal.
