Melissa Caddick's husband was such an "unimpressive and unreliable witness" he hindered efforts to determine how, when and where she died, a coroner has concluded.
Deputy State Coroner Elizabeth Ryan devoted several pages of her findings on the fate of Sydney fraudster Ms Caddick to critiquing the various accounts given by Anthony Koletti since his wife's disappearance.
The magistrate has a "strong suspicion" Mr Koletti has withheld information about Ms Caddick's movements in the hours before she was reported missing to police.
Ms Caddick, who authorities say was running a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, was last seen in November 2020 at her Dover Heights home.
She vanished on November 12, after being raided by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) over her alleged financial misconduct.
The Lidcombe Coroner's Court heard on Thursday Ms Caddick is dead, but the date and cause of her demise remains uncertain.
It was accepted Mr Koletti, a DJ and hairdresser, was the last known person to see her alive.
He was expected to be a "primary source" of information crucial in piecing together the events of November 12, 2020, Magistrate Ryan said.
Instead, she concluded, throughout the investigation Mr Koletti "has chosen at times to make statements that are simply untrue".
"Mr Koletti was ' … a most unimpressive and unreliable witness', whose lack of candour was one of the reasons why it was not possible to conclude how, when and where Ms Caddick had died," she said.
During several hours on the stand at the inquest, Mr Koletti repeatedly denied misleading the police or assisting his wife in disappearing.
He left the inquest on Thursday to a media scrum and refused to answer questions.
Thursday's findings outlined what Magistrate Ryan called the inconsistent and "incomprehensible" evidence Mr Koletti has given since Ms Caddick was last seen alive.
There was a focus on the differing versions of events, as told by Mr Koletti, between the ASIC raid on November 11 and him making the missing person's report on November 13.
Initially, he told police, he and Ms Caddick went to bed around 9:30pm on November 11, 2020, and he last saw her about midnight.
Since then, he has claimed to have seen his wife sleeping at 4am the next morning and has given varying explanations about how that occurred.
He also told police she might have booked a room at a hotel in Bondi Junction, saying it was their "go to" retreat in Sydney.
The hotel later advised police it had no record of either Ms Caddick or Mr Koletti ever staying there.
When pressed at the inquest on why he offered this guidance, Mr Koletti replied he was "was trying to provide relevant information, no matter how stupid".
The court heard he also told authorities Ms Caddick left home to jog at 5:30am "which she does every day", but CCTV footage had not captured her doing so for a month before she vanished.
Magistrate Ryan said many of the reasons Mr Koletti provided at the inquest for the discrepancies "simply did not make sense".
"It is fair to say that when he was not creating further inconsistencies, he was attempting to account for them with opaque and at times unintelligible explanations," she said.
"Notably however, every police officer who had any significant interaction with Mr Koletti suspected that he had some knowledge of Ms Caddick's movements, but had chosen not to share it with them."
The magistrate accepted his wife's disappearance must have been "deeply disturbing" for Mr Koletti.
She made no findings as to what information he may have withheld, but found Mr Koletti's "shifting accounts" had imposed a "significant burden" on the police investigation.
A Federal Court case brought by ASIC, in which Ms Caddick's clients are attempting to recoup lost funds, continues.
