Cranston: Meet the accountant linked to Sydney’s most infamous tax scammers
Banned Sydney tax agent back in business on the Gold Coast
Controversial Sydney accountant Filomena Kyriacou, who was stripped of her tax agent registration five years ago, has emerged at the helm of a new tax consulting group based on the Gold Coast.
According to emails and an Australian Taxation Office audit seen by The Australian Financial Review, Kyriacou’s new firm has been advising a popular pizza chain and a prominent Sydney hair salon that used a labour hire company under fire from the ATO for not paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes.
Sydney accountant Filomena Kyriacou is director of a new tax consultancy business. Kyriacou was the co-founder of Sydney accounting firm Wentworth Williams, which shut down but was linked to some of the most infamous tax scammers in the country. She was stripped of her tax registration in 2020 after the ATO found 26 of the firm’s clients owed $18 million in taxes. The ATO also found she had been the director of seven companies that allegedly breached their tax obligations.
Despite the loss of her tax registration, records lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission show Kyriacou continued working in the accountancy world as sole director of Lux Advisory. She took over from her son in the position in early 2022, according to the ASIC records.
Lux Advisory says on its website it is based in Miami, and sells itself as “friendly, dedicated Gold Coast tax accountants”, offering advice on company structures, cryptocurrency bookkeeping and managing payroll.
Internal Lux Advisory emails show that from 2020 Lux dealt with the tax affairs for the family owners of Gemelli Italian, which runs four popular pizza restaurants in the Gold Coast and Brisbane. The owners were also previously a client of Kyriacou’s old firm, Wentworth Williams.
Gemelli has engaged workers at its four sites through a labour hire firm and pays wages and Pay As You Go taxes to that firm, records show.
ATO audit
Celebrity hairdresser Jaye Edwards’ business, Edwards and Co, which operates hair salons on the east coast including in the Gold Coast, also used the labour hire firm last year.
However, an ATO audit from last year, seen by the Financial Review, found the labour hire firm, known as Reddy Advisory Services, did not lodge income tax returns for 2023 despite repeated requests.
The ATO estimates the firm did not pay $638,000 in PAYG taxes during that time and has issued it with $478,000 in penalties.
A separate ATO audit found the firm did not pay $75,000 in superannuation to dozens of employees supplied to Gemelli, many from Italy, from late 2022 to early 2024, resulting in $113,000 in penalties.
Reddy Advisory Services was set up in mid-2022 and its director is an Indian visa worker. Kyriacou said she did not know about the labour hire firm and could not comment.
“None of Kyriacou or Lux Advisory’s current clients use labour hire companies to pay staff,” her lawyers said. “Since March 2022, Kyriacou has, through the company Lux Advisory Pty Ltd (Lux Advisory), provided bookkeeping services.” The lawyers said she works exclusively as a bookkeeper and does not provide tax advice, “nor does any company of which she is a director”.
‘Parted ways’
Despite company emails showing Lux Advisory provided tax returns to the Gemelli owners, Kyriacou said through her lawyers that “Gemelli was not, and is not, a client of Lux Advisory”. She also denied Edwards and Co was a client of Lux Advisory.
Edwards and Co owner Jaye Edwards said the business “parted ways with Lux Advisory a number of weeks ago for separate issues” and “we were only working together for a couple of years”. He confirmed all his workers were paid super.
“I certainly have never received advice, communicated with or even met Filomena Kyriacou.”
Gemelli did not return requests for comment before publication.
Clients of Kyriacou’s former firm, Wentworth Williams, were known to use labour hire firms that siphoned off PAYG tax by transferring it to related firms rather than passing it on to the ATO. The labour hire firms folded when the ATO started chasing them, and then rebirthed under a new name.
Kyriacou previously worked with those convicted in the Plutus Payroll tax fraud and was linked with organised crime figure George Alex, who was later convicted for tax fraud in the construction industry.
Kyriacou was never accused of any involvement in the two fraud schemes or phoenixing. She denies setting up any tax-dodging firms.
However, in mid-2020, the Tax Practitioners Board hit her with the maximum five-year ban on registering as a tax agent after finding she was not a “fit and proper” person.
TPB chair Peter De Cure declined to say whether Kyriacou’s position as director of Lux Advisory breached the ban.
“If they’re registered [to provide tax advice], companies are obligated to ensure that all their directors are fit and proper people,” he said.
“If she [Kyriacou] does reapply for registration she has to satisfy the [Tax Practitioners] Board she is a fit and proper person to be registered.”
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