A co-owner of Epping Gardens aged care home, which is at the centre of several investigations and a major class action over the deaths of 38 residents from COVID-19, has gone to Greece and is unable to say when he will return.
Multimillionaire Peter Arvanitis and his wife, Areti, left Melbourne about two weeks before Christmas after receiving a travel exemption from the Australian Department of Home Affairs to attend to “essential business” in Athens. Peter Arvanitis and his wife, Areti.Credit:Instagram “[I am] unsure of my return date, depending on business progress here and of course requirements of international travellers returning home. The plan is to be home sooner rather than later,” Mr Arvanitis told The Sunday Age.
He has also recently listed his trophy home in Toorak for off-market sale.
The Irving Road mansion is registered in the name of his Maserati-driving wife, and could fetch up to $40 million.
Several grieving families who lost elderly relatives in the Epping Gardens outbreak have demanded that the care-home mogul return to Australia to “face the music”.
Mr Arvanitis and business partner Tony Antonopoulos each own a 50 per cent stake in Heritage Care Pty Ltd, which has a portfolio of 10 aged care homes in Sydney and Melbourne, including the embattled Epping Gardens facility. Areti Arvanitis with her Maserati, and Epping Gardens co-owner Tony Antonopoulos and his wife, Stacey.Credit: When Mr Arvanitis departed for Greece, he chose not to inform anyone at Heritage Care of his travel plans. Even Heritage Care chief executive Greg Reeve was unaware Mr Arvanitis had left the country.
“I did not inform Greg Reeve as my personal business has nothing to do with Heritage Care. I do not have an executive or board role in Heritage Care, and my investment is passive. My private business has nothing to do with any employee of Heritage Care,” Mr Arvanitis said. The Arvanitises’ opulent home was featured in Vogue Living.Credit:Instagram He resigned as a director of Heritage Care in September, when media attention on his vast wealth and opulent lifestyle became a “distraction to the good work of the staff”.
Of the private listing of his mansion, Mr Arvanitis said: “Although I am not actively looking to sell, everything has a price and only for a significant premium.
“If I was to sell, I have several properties in Toorak and interstate I could move into. My history in real estate demonstrates this as I have sold over 60 properties in the last five years.”
The property featured in the March edition of Vogue Living , which gushed about the “gluttonous trappings of wealth within a classical framework”. The couple’s Toorak residence.Credit:Instagram Ms Arvanitis’ bedroom was described as a “first-floor boudoir that is off-the-charts big, fitted with banks of Gucci-filled cabinets and furnished with one-of-a-kind art and objects commissioned by the Italian fashion house in esteem of her patronage”.
Mr Arvanitis, who joined Heritage Care in January 2019, was the founder and one-time director of listed for-profit nursing home giant Estia . He sold his shareholding in […]
