Terry Ingram, writing in the Australian Financial Review said Vaughan Strawbridge and David Lombe from Deloitte's Corporate Reorganisation Group had been appointed receivers and managers to three of his companies.

The appointment was made by the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, the first ranking secured creditor, and the companies are Filmtype, Baymont Investments (NSW) and Ronald Coles Investment Gallery (at Kenthurst).

A total of 404 paintings were seized from Coles's Kenthurst Sydney gallery and two other premises under warrant by the NSW Police on January 21. Police estimated they are worth in excess of $5 million.

E amonn Duff, writing for the Sun-Herald, reports police have now received hundreds of complaints relating to Mr Coles, who has vanished allegedly owing tens of millions of dollars in lost art and money.

Police are ploughing through a backlog of complaints dating back to 1994 and have taken statements from more than 150 people owed between $20,000 and $1.2 million.

Detectives are also investigating potential widespread forgeries relating to some of Australia's most celebrated artists, including d'Arcy Doyle and Norman Lindsay.

The art world is bracing for more damaging revelations after an auctioneer claimed he and others were aware valuable fakes had passed through auction rooms.

``It's been common knowledge for a while,'' said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ``Nobody wanted to undermine confidence in the industry. Like it or not, the truth is now going to emerge.

``Of the dozen or so d'Arcy Doyle works that came in over the past year, I could only be certain that he painted four. There were three or four which he most definitely didn't. d'Arcy was not a prolific painter and yet in recent times, there has been a never-ending stream of fresh works.''.

In most cases, art clients opened their self-managed superannuation funds to buy the art.

Once Mr Coles had sold a client's painting at a supposed profit, he encouraged them to upgrade to more valuable works.

Because of tax office laws, however, super-funded investment art cannot be stored at home, so Mr Coles retained the works.