HOW A GROUP OF LAWYERS STOLE $20 MILLION FROM UNDER THE NOSE OF REGULATORS WITH THE HELP OF A JUDGE
The calibre of judicial appointments throughout Australia is starkly illuminated by a succession of grave scandals afflicting the Supreme Court of Queensland and the High Court of Australia.
In 2020, former High Court Justice Dyson Heydon was subject to findings that he had sexually harassed six of his associates. Significantly, these determinations emanated not from a judicial tribunal but from an independent inquiry, a deliberate choice necessitated by the prior inaction of then-Chief Justice Murray Gleeson and Justice Michael McHugh, who, upon being apprised of earlier complaints, elected to disregard them.
In 2021, two judges of the Family Court hailing from Queensland faced suspension amid allegations of serious misconduct. One, Judge Andrew Guy, chose suicide rather than endure the humiliation of a public inquiry into his actions.
These episodes betray a pervasive, cloistered culture of entitlement, ineptitude, intimidation, and factionalism entrenched within Queensland’s uppermost judicial echelons.
The protracted Mango Hill Litigation (BS1714/2011) and its sequelae (BS8866 & BS 8867/2019), overseen by former Chief Justice Catherine Holmes, stand as a poignant exemplar of this systemic malaise.
THE HEGEMONY OF PRIVILEGE AND PEDIGREE
Heydon has a companion he met regularly for lunch in Sydney during the investigation into allegations of his misconduct. That companion turned out to be the colorful Sydney barrister, Francis Maxwell Douglas KC. Douglas, Heydon’s legal advisor, epitomizes the character of the “untouchables” in the legal profession, at the center of corruption and crime in the justice system.
A native of Queensland, Douglas has managed to pull off one of the biggest heists in modern legal history. The audacious theft of $20,000,000.00, owed to his instructing solicitor Delta Law “Delta”, and creditors of his client Mio Art was diverted to Douglas and his associates instead.
David Keane KC- Son of Retired High Court Justice Patrick Keane
Deep in debt at the time, Douglas conspired with his client Mio Art, junior barristers David Keane (son of High Court judge Patrick Keane) Stephen Colditz, Edmund Galea, (a banned and disqualified finance broker), and solicitor James Nicholas Conomos, to divert the award of $20,000,000.00 away from its rightful beneficiaries into their collective hands.
The award, the settlement from the arbitration of the Mango Hill Litigation, was deposited in the trust account of, twice ‘Queensland lawyer of the year’, James Nicholas Conomos -The Society’s ‘eminence gris’, and by other accounts a ‘judge whisperer’.
A CRIMINAL BREACH OF TRUST
Conomos distributed that award of $20,000,000.00 at the behest of Mio Art, Delta Law’s client, bypassing Delta Law, who claimed a lien on those monies. Ignoring the lien, Conomos distributed the award in breach of the Legal Profession Act, rules that govern the handling of trust money, on the written instructions of one Silvana Perovich, a Delta Law client and former administrative assistant at Delta Law.
Silvana Perovich
Perovich was an administrative assistant at Delta, a person with no legal interest in the money, with no legal authority or right to instruct Conomos on its distribution. Conomos was aware of Perovich’s status. Regardless, he breached his duty as trustee of those funds and acted on her instructions ignoring the solicitor’s liens and a court order over the distribution of the $20,000,000.00. The Queensland Law Society has refused to sanction Conomos’s actions.
Conomos’s complicity in offenses relating to his dealing with trust money all $20,000,000.00 of it is captured in emails between he, Mio Art, Silvana Perovich and his client Robert Whitton. Whitton was at the time, trustee of the bankrupt estate of Silvana Perovich. Conomos’s breaches were reinforced by his own inculpatory testimony in court in BS8866 & BS 8867/2019.
Instructions on the distribution of the award was conveyed to Conomos in a series of emails from Silvana Perovich, ending with a cryptic “Thanks and can we have some more……see you in the Bahamas“.
Triangulation of communications between Perovich, Conomos and Francis Douglas is reinforced by the embedded metadata in emails and phone calls. The evidence was available but ignored by the presiding judge in the hearing of BS 8866 & BS 8867 of 2019, Catherine Holmes CJ, The Queensland Law Society, and the Legal Services Commissioner of Queensland.
Relying on her discretionary powers as a judge, Holmes CJ did not call for corroborating evidence on any of the controversial claims put forward by the offending lawyers involved in the removal of the $20,000,000 or the lawyer who’s testimony on documents, invoices and receipts she referred to as ‘sham‘, ‘fake‘ and ‘false‘ which were used to mislead the mediation and mediator in BS1714 of 2011.- Yet Holmes CJ failed or refused to comment adversely on the admissions of witnesses Richard Spencer and James Conomos whose inculpatory evidence tainted their testimonies and their conduct as lawyers in the misappropriation of $20,000,000 as evidenced in BS8866 & BS 8867 of 2019.
Holmes instead made a finding against solicitor Mr. Rozario in her judgment saying she did not believe his testimony although she did not think he was dishonest, a statement the Queensland Law Society used to refuse to renew Mr. Rozario’s practicing certificate in 2020.
Perovich explicitly outlined Her’s and Mio Art’s intentions to seize all of the award money, in a letter she wrote to Alan Thompson of Blackstone, a legal firm specializing in costing files in legal matters. James Conomos brazenly helped Perovich to give effect to her plans over the award money. He was trustee of the awarded money and was acutely aware of the liens over them. Conomos also knew Perovich had no authority or interest in the award funds. A four years investigation has unearthed a treasure trove evidence of what must be the largest money heist by a group of lawyers in Australia.
The audacity and extent of Douglas’s and Conomos’s criminality and misconduct spanning decades in practice, protected by the shield of their reputations, and the willful blindness of the bench and regulators was flagrant.
James Conomos the trustee who ignored a court order and liens to help himself to the award
James Conomos Trustee Solicitor “see you in the Bahamas”
THE LIENS
Douglas’s genial eccentricity appears to have charmed a fawning bench in Brisbane, sufficient for them to have ignored clear signs of his breaches of professional conduct, the Legal Profession Act, and the criminality concealed in his advocacy.
Douglas pleaded a salvage and a solicitor’s lien in the Mango Hill matter which in simple terms means, that his client and his instructor, Delta, would, in priority to all other claims, be entitled to their fees, charges, costs, and other entitlements from out of the award first ahead of any other creditor. The remainder after Delta’s entitlements were satisfied in legal fees, would then be divided between the other creditors of Mio Art, principally, TVM Pty Ltd and Earnings Ltd, the latter 2 being Mio Art’s biggest creditors, who were collectively owed $40,000,000.
The Queensland Law Society-The QLS- and Legal Services Commission- The LSC-are aware of James Conomos’s breaches of the LPA (Legal Profession Act 2007) and ASCR (Australian Solicitors Conduct Rules) in his dealing with trust monies. Yet, both regulators have refused to act against Conomos. Conomos continues to hold a current practicing certificate to practice law in Queensland.
FRANCIS MAXWELL DOUGLAS KC
Douglas has a long history of misleading the courts, concealing, and manufacturing evidence with his structured eloquence.
Francis Douglas KC
Correspondence, between Douglas and his former spouse Sigrun Baldvinsdottir, in their matrimonial dispute, alleges threats of violence, theft, unlawful transfer of joint assets, bullying and manipulation of financial records by Douglas throughout their marriage.
Sigrun even accused Douglas of stealing money from their children’s trusts and wedging her with legal costs and dubious tax reduction schemes to discourage her from proceeding with an open hearing in the family court.
In his dispute with Sigrun, Douglas impersonated the same solicitor Delta, instructing him in the Mango Hill Litigation -when in fact Douglas was self-represented. He used the solicitor’s letterhead, forging his signature in the correspondence without the solicitor’s approval, consent or knowledge. Douglas had the assistance of his now confidante, Silvana Perovich.
The metadata embedded in emails in each of the matters involving Douglas, clearly evidences a trajectory of correspondence and triangulates a conspiracy between Perovich, Douglas, his junior barristers, Keane and Colditz, solicitor Conomos, and Galea in the Mango Hill Litigation, and in his dispute with the NAB, CBA and the ATO.
Douglas owed several millions of dollars to the ATO which he attempted to burden his former spouse with. The forensic evidence of Douglas and Perovich’s unauthorized use of Delta’s letterhead and its principal’s signatures (forged) on correspondence was available for the court to examine. Yet no one called for it in evidence.
The QLS, the supreme court of Queensland and the QLSC chose instead to use their discretionary powers to disregard any call for the evidence.
DOUGLAS’ DESPERATION AND A NIGERIAN SCAM
Douglas has been financially distressed for some time. His problems began in 2015 when ensnared in a Nigerian type scam over fictitious diamonds from Namibia. He lost $500,000.00 in that scam and was forced to borrow $50,000.00 from his instructing solicitor Quintin Rozario, who he threatened with withdrawal of his services in the Mango Hill arbitration if the ‘loan’ was not forthcoming.
Douglas lost his waterfront home in Sydney, began drinking heavily and was evicted from his prestigious 7th-floor chambers in the Deutsch Bank building in Phillip street in Sydney’s CBD in 2016. He is now a door tenant at 10th floor chambers in Sydney.
A complaint filed against Douglas with the LSC and Bar Councils of NSW and Queensland was summarily dismissed as being late and without merit.
THE ROLE OF CATHERINE HOLMES CJ
Catherine Holmes-The Former Chief Justice Presiding
There isn’t a more clear-cut example of judicial incompetence, negligence, and intellectual dishonesty than that which Holmes CJ displayed in her handling of BS8866 & BS8867/2019 (“The Emperor Application”). Her judgment delivered in January of 2020, was flawed and lacked any convincing legal basis. In short, she vandalized the proceedings.
Holmes CJ used words like “sham” “fake” and “false “to describe invoices and other documentary evidence presented to her by Richard Spencer, solicitor, one of two key witnesses who Douglas had previously represented and joined in the Emperor Application. Although she clearly understood the gravity of the evidence before her, she was unresponsive and deliberately it seems, unhelpful by ignoring it.
The Emperor Application was an unsuccessful attempt by parties aligned with Douglas to end the administration of Delta. A liquidator would have had very wide powers to investigate issues leading to the theft of the $20,000,000 had Holmes CJ intervened. But she was clearly unwilling to go there. Holmes CJ instead shielded Douglas, Spencer and Conomos from that bullet and allowed Delta to remain in the hands of the administrator William Cotter.
The testimony of witness, solicitor Richard Spencer in the Emperor Application, described in detail his involvement in extensive forgery and impersonation of witnesses, leading to the theft of $20,000,000.00. Holmes CJ failed to act.
WILFUL BLINDNESS
A vital player in the scheme to defraud beneficiaries of the award from the Mango Hill Litigation was Edmund Galea. Guided by Douglas, Galea brazenly lied to the court in the Emperor Application. He lied to the former trustees of Silvana Perovich and Richard Spencer in bankruptcy, SV Partners and in the mediation of BS17114 of 2011. He lied about having funded Douglas and the Mango Hill Litigation to the tune of several millions of dollars. Galea produced no evidence to corroborate his claims, yet Holmes CJ accepted his testimony at face value.
Galea’s Westpac banking records are at variance with his testimony in court. At the time, Galea was being investigated by the Queensland Police Service for identity theft over a sham $2,000,000 property deal in Brisbane.
Holmes CJ, ignored the admissions of criminality by Galea including his receipt of secret commissions from Douglas and Richard Spencer.
WILLIAM COTTER-THE ADMINISTRATOR
Threatened with a damages claim if he got it wrong, William Cotter, the administrator, capitulated and was drawn into the vortex of Douglas, Perovich, and Conomos’s conspiracy. Ostensibly and out of fear, he allowed the second creditors meeting of Delta to be stacked by Conomos, Perovich, Spencer, 4 barristers, Douglas, Keane, Colditz and a Sydney barrister Anthony Hopkins.
Desperately in need of money himself following the Covid pandemic, Cotter accepted $375,000.00 in 2023 from James Conomos on behalf of “Creditors” ostensibly to scuttle a $7,000,000.00 debt owed to Delta by Mio Art.
A condition of the $375,000.00 payment was that Cotter would refrain from disclosing to other creditors, details of various settlements he entered into with Conomos and his clients in the administration of Delta. Cotter would also agree not to pursue claims against Mio Art for the $7,000,000.00 debt to Delta.
“Creditors”, in this context are those individuals Cotter had erroneously and willfully admitted into the administration of Delta, intimidated. Few if any of them qualified as creditors of Delta under the Corporations Act. They include Douglas, Keane and Colditz. Each of Colditz, Keane and Douglas failed to disclose receipt of clandestine payments each had received for services rendered to Delta from Galea, Spencer and Perovich. Cotter has refused numerous requests to produce attendance records and proxies of Creditors as well as other vital information in the administration Delta.
In a letter written by his solicitors, Rose Litigation lawyers, to a creditor of Delta, Cotter, offered what was essentially a bribe to the creditor, to settle a debt Douglas, Spencer and Perovich incurred through Edmund Galea (Galea still then posing as a financial services entity under the name of ALF- Award Litigation Funding). Galea was banned and disqualified by ASIC at the time of the debt and the ban remains on ASIC’s records.
A condition was attached to Cotter’s offer to the creditor; the creditor should not use the ‘bribe’ Cotter had offered to contribute to the administration of Delta.
Footnote:
In December of 2019 around the time of the Emperor hearing, Catherine Holmes CJ, was by implication, in a newspaper article, identified by a former president of the Queensland Law Society, as being one of a number of judges laboring under the stress of their workloads who sought refuge in self-medication and alcohol for relief.
Peter James Wilton and Meredith Hicks
