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INSIDER

INVESTORS struggling to prise $700,000 from the promoters of an ASX float that failed last year, have been somewhat surprised to discover essentially the same company this week trying to list through the back door of healthcare company MediVac.

While last year's float used a company called Whyte Management Company, the 2012 version seems to be Republica Capital.

Both companies are promoted by deal maker Tim Alford as specialist high-yield investment managers. The plan for Whyte was to mimic some US groups and invest in convertible notes issued by micro-cap companies, which means there's an income stream from the interest on the note.

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Insider has tried for days to speak with Alford, but has not been able to connect. MediVac executive chairman Paul McPherson did say that he was still doing due diligence on Republica's proposal and was due to meet with Alford.

MediVac has, though, already accepted an initial $154,000 capital injection by issuing 25.7 million shares at 0.6¢ each.

Republica has a website that lists Kieran Honour, James Mitchell and Rodger Johnston as its team, although its phone number is a serviced office in Sydney, where a receptionist recognised none of those names and declined to reveal who represented Republica. She did agree to pass on Insider's message, but no more has been heard.

Republica was only registered in January and Australian Securities and Investments Commission records list its shares as owned by an Alford company, Somerset House Holdings.

Republica does have a financial services sub-licence with ASIC via an arrangement with a company called Alt-FX.

Republica's Mitchell was also one of the three proposed directors for the public listing of Whyte. He told Insider last night that Alford had told him on Wednesday that the Whyte $700,000 had been ''settled''. Insider hears otherwise from the investors.

The investors were asked in March to sign what appears to be an exit contract, where Whyte and its directors were to be released from their obligations and responsibility for the money assigned to Alford and Republica. The investors declined.

Normal practice with failed ASX floats is to give the money back. Whyte seems to be saying that the investors' money has already gone into convertible notes of companies called Transcon Asia Pacific, SecureCo and Beaufort Capital. The investors are, though, yet to see any paperwork confirming this.

Only one of those investments was among Whyte's ''strong portfolio of four investments from the past 12 months of operations'' described in the information memorandum used to attract investment last year.

There was a ''Beaufort Partners'', but not Beaufort Capital. Of the other companies that Whyte claimed were in its portfolio, Yulleba Prospecting got as far as a prospectus and another, Bourke Resources, has also been shelved due to market conditions.

A common thread among many of the companies involved is public company chairman, former deputy mayor of Sydney's Woollahra, and a member of one of Australia's oldest and respectable families, John Darling.

Darling, who is understood to be in the US, was the proposed executive chairman of Whyte Management, according to documents, and was until August last year a director of Alford's Somerset House company, which controls Republica.

Darling is also listed in ASIC records as a director of Beaufort Capital, a director of Yulleba and of Bourke Resources. That last company is associated with another public company where Darling is chairman, Allmine Group.

He is also a director of another listed company, Viculus, that has been inactive since 2009 when its operating business went into receivership.

Last November, the Whyte investors claim, they were told by Alford that Whyte was to be listed via the shell of Viculus. That never occurred, and control of Viculus's board seems to have changed in recent months with the departures of Ian and Alan Mathieson, to be replaced by TPG Australasia managing director Robert Parton.