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Billionaire heiress and renowned philanthropist Debbie Dadon is suing her top-tier financial advisers, alleging they botched her affairs to the point where she is facing a $12 million-plus tax bill.
Dadon, the daughter of Marc Besen – Highpoint Shopping Centre’s former owner and co-founder of the Sussan retail brand – is suing tax specialists from Deloitte and Pitcher Partners in the Supreme Court of Victoria, claiming both groups gave her bad advice.
Debbie Dadon is one of the Melbourne’s most respected philanthropists. Dadon alleges in court documents that the advisers encouraged her to set up an investment structure to receive $58.3 million in dividends from business projects overseen by her and her former husband Albert Dadon’s property development and investment group Ubertas. Under their advice, Debbie Dadon claimed a $17.4 million tax offset from the more than $58 million in income she earned in 2015 from four companies as the result of her financial separation from her jazz musician and businessman ex-husband. Debbie Dadon alleges that the Australian Taxation Office has since refused to allow the offset, meaning that she now faces a $12.3 million tax shortfall – a sum that could increase significantly once penalties are included. She alleges in court documents that both Deloitte Private (an arm of the accounting and consulting group, Deloitte) and Pitcher Partners provided representations that were false and misleading, acted negligently and provided advice that was not of a competent standard. The 69-year-old comes from one of Melbourne’s most prominent and respected business and philanthropic families. Her sisters, Carol Schwartz and Naomi Milgrom, and brother, Daniel Besen, are all accomplished business people who also have prominent roles in the arts and philanthropy. The Dadons’ daughters, Stef and Jess, are hugely successful entrepreneurs in their own right, founding the wildly popular Twoobs environmentally conscious footwear brand. Alongside her sisters, Debbie Dadon is a director of the Besen Family Foundation – one of the largest private family charitable organisations in the country. The foundation provides grants to support the development and operation of a wide range of causes from children’s libraries to bird sanctuaries, Indigenous community programs and the Holocaust Museum.
Stef and Jess Dadon founded the hugely successful Twoobs shoe brand.PAUL HARRISIt states on its website that it supports projects “which enable the community to thrive, in spirit of inclusion, equity, empowerment and unity”. The Besen family also oversees an impressive art collection which is held at the Eva and Marc Besen Centre at the family’s Yarra Valley winery, TarraWarra. Marc Besen, a popular figure in Melbourne’s social circles, died in 2025, while his beloved wife, Eva, died in 2021. The Dadon family is well known for its striking property developments including two major towers on St Kilda Road and an apartment complex overlooking Flagstaff Gardens. According to court documents, Debbie Dadon was involved in the Ubertas business with her husband since 1982 until their financial separation in 2013 and 2014, after which the assets of the business were divided up between the couple.Ubertas’ 350 William development rises above Flagstaff Gardens.JESSE MARLOW The 2015 dividends that flowed through to Debbie Dadon were the result of the financial agreement from the couple’s separation two years earlier. She alleges she was encouraged by Deloitte and Pitcher Partners advisers in 2015 to set up a new company, D Dadon Holdings, to receive the dividends as fully franked. Fully franked dividends are a tax offset that represents the corporate tax a company has already paid on its income and is a common way to stop investors from being taxed twice on the same earnings.As the result of Deloitte Private and Pitcher Partners’ allegedly poor advice, Dadon is now expected to pay more tax than what would have been otherwise levied on these sorts of dividends.The case reveals that the Tax Office queried the arrangement in 2024 following a 2018 review of the Ubertas Group known as Project Sofia Audit – an audit that was later dropped by the Tax Office in 2024, according to court documents.Deloitte, Pitcher Partners and lawyers for Debbie Dadon were all approached for comment.As the lawsuit was only filed earlier this month, Deloitte Private and Pitcher Partners are yet to file a formal defence in response to Debbie Dadon’s claim
Thinking outside the boxDebbie Dadon alleges that she was not properly informed by her financial advisers that the tax offset could not be applied unless her company held its interest in the shares for a continuous period of at least 45 days.