The former owner of a 22-room Toorak mansion that once sported the highest price tag in the suburb will have to return home from Paris to fight his tax battle.
Iron ore magnate Socrates Vasiliades is fighting a near $30 million tax bill that is associated with his alleged earnings and business investments while working as a commodities trader in Australia.
As part of the case, the Australian Taxation Office has frozen the $18.5 million in sales proceeds from his former abode on Towers Road, Toorak, which was offloaded to Sarah Lew, daughter of billionaire rag trader Solomon Lew, in 2014.
In the years ahead of the sale, the owners reportedly knocked back two $25 million offers, holding out for $30 million.
Last week Federal Court judge Jennifer Davies refused Mr Vasiliades' request to give evidence via video link from Paris due to chronic eye and heart issues or to allow for the trial to be delayed until his health improved.
In an affidavit, Mr Vasiliades said he has been in negotiations with the ATO to resolve the matter, but added he had been "unwell, stressed, angry and completely frustrated with [the] state of the negotiations".
"As mentioned, the stress of all this has been too much and has taken its toll on me and it is not clear I will recover," Mr Vasiliades wrote in an email to the ATO that was tendered to the court.
"I do not feel well at all ... Under medical advice I cannot make it personally to Australia for the trial. I will have to see if I am up to having a video link," he added.
He claimed the only specialist appointment he could get for his urgent heart issue was March 16 – the day after the trial was supposed to begin.
In refusing the requests, Justice Davies noted extensive case law requiring tax cases to be heard in person, as well as the time difference between Paris and Melbourne and the need for Mr Vasiliades to be cross-examined extensively.
Mr Vassiliades and his socialite wife Celeste famously spent $30 million over six years doing up the Toorak property but resided in the sumptuous pile for only six days before moving to France.
Mr Vasiliades was the chief executive of Glencore-backed Core Mining, which has rights to mine a large iron ore deposit in the Republic of the Congo.
The company is now controlled by Saudi Arabia's MASCO and it appears Mr Vasiliades has severed his relationship with Core Mining.