which owns Western United and is behind a stalled stadium development in Melbourne’s west<\/a>.<\/p>\nMr Sourasis is attempting to restart the project with funding from a lender. If the plan succeeds it would clear the bulk of his tax debt.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/127a174377b8733aaffd6f23aad2878b\")
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Western United’s future remains in limbo, with their licence stripped for the upcoming A-League season. (AAP: Scott Barbour)<\/p>\n
ATO first took legal action last November<\/p>\n
The amount now claimed by the ATO is almost $2m more than it said Mr Sourasis owed when it first took legal action against him over unpaid tax bills in November last year.<\/p>\n
However, the ATO has dropped claims of unpaid tax against a company through which Mr Sourasis owns 84 per cent of the Hemisphere player agency business, which represents Pendlebury in his negotiations with the Pies.<\/p>\n
In addition to Pendlebury, Hemisphere represents a string of AFL and AFLW players including Lions midfielder Levi Ashcroft, Melbourne defenders Steven May and Jake Lever and members of football dynasty the Duursma family including this year’s likely No. 1 draft pick Willem Duursma.<\/p>\n
Mr Sourasis is a director of the company that trades as Hemisphere, McDonald Sports & Talent Management.<\/p>\n
But he said he does not run the business or work there as a player agent.<\/p>\n
“I’m not involved in any day-to-day operations, to me it’s just an investment,” he told the ABC.<\/p>\n
![\"AFL](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/cd4743a5b70953e2324cfecb96920f78\")
<\/p>\n
Mr Sourasis owns a majority stake in Hemisphere Management Group. (Facebook: Hemisphere Management Group)<\/p>\n
He also told the ABC he vigorously rejects the allegations Pendlebury has made in the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
“The allegations are vehemently denied and, as a legal process has been started, we can’t make any further comments at this stage,” he told the ABC on Monday.<\/p>\n
Pendlebury’s lawyer, Leon Zwier of Arnold Bloch Leibler, declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Unauthorised transaction allegations at centre of court case<\/p>\n
The tax revelations add context to the Supreme Court lawsuit launched by Pendlebury, who was once close to Mr Sourasis.<\/p>\n
The ABC understands the relationship between the two men, whose families once travelled the world together, has irreparably broken down.<\/p>\n
![\"Jason](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/99b71bb0b8b8acdaa1b3a1e1cbf68829\")
<\/p>\n
As recently as January, Mr Sourasis and Pendlebury were featured on the Western United website co-promoting a wine brand. (Western United)<\/p>\n
Mr Sourasis was the Norm Smith medallist’s financial adviser between 2013 and 2025 and managed his millions until February this year when Pendlebury claims huge amounts of cash were transferred from a bank account without his authorisation or knowledge.<\/p>\n
Court documents claim Mr Sourasis made more than 50 transactions to accounts associated with himself with some withdrawals as high as $305,000.<\/p>\n
The documents show that much of the money allegedly misappropriated from Pendlebury’s Macquarie\u00a0Bank account was transferred with descriptions that appear to refer to the Western United football club or property developments related to it that Mr Sourasis was undertaking.<\/p>\n
This includes transfers to Sayers Road Investment Co, which is ultimately owned by Mr Sourasis and shares its name with a site in Tarneit where Western United’s parent company, Western Melbourne Group, was developing a stadium complex.<\/p>\n
The court documents also claim Mr Sourasis failed to pay back a $300,000 loan to Pendlebury despite a promise to return the sum within 24 hours and being given a loan extension.<\/p>\n
The star midfielder is now asking the Supreme Court of Victoria to order Mr Sourasis to return the $2,148,900 allegedly misappropriated from his accounts.<\/p>\n
He is also claiming the $300,000 loan at 50 per cent interest per annum which, as of today, would bring the total amount to about $539,771.28.<\/p>\n
Mr Sourasis has not filed a defence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The sports business mogul accused of misappropriating millions of dollars from Collingwood captain Scott Pendlebury also owes the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[638,17170,64,63,10990,1108,137637,19083,85,44066],"class_list":{"0":"post-230702","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-ato","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-collingwood","13":"tag-court","14":"tag-jason-sourasis","15":"tag-scott-pendlebury","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-western-united"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}