ABUSE OF POWER IN INSOLVENCIES AND ADMINISTRATION– “…SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS“
In 2019, William Cotter’s appointment as Delta Law’s administrator unraveled a scandalous injustice, after trustee lawyer James Conomos misappropriated $20 million.
Despite incontrovertible evidence of James Conomos’ flagrant violation of a court order, a solicitor’s lien, and the Australian Solicitor Conduct Rules, William Cotter, swayed by Queensland Supreme Court Justice Catherine Holmes’ prejudiced assertion questioning Quintin Rozario’s evidence of the existence of a contract with Delta Law, summarily dismissed irrefutable proof of a binding agreement. This contract unequivocally entitled Rozario to fees for 12 years of dedicated work on the Mango Hill case. In a grievous miscarriage of justice, Cotter slashed Delta and Rozario’s legitimate $11.38 million claim for 11 years of legal services to a paltry $7.6 million, admitting their claims in the administration at a derisory $1.
Cotter instead favored lawyers Francis Douglas KC, David Keane, and Stephen Colditz and an unknown lawyer from Sydney by the name of Anthony Hopkins, a Douglas associate, as lawful creditors, ignoring their prior substantial receipt of payments and the question of validity of the claims of Anthony Hopkins barrister.
A complaint against both Anthony Hopkins and Francis Douglas QC, the latter who squeezed $50,000 from Rozario as a “loan” he refused to repay, the NSW Bar Council dismissed Rozario’ complaint against Douglas KC and Hopkins saying it was a little too late and without merit.
Most egregious was Cotter’s admitting Edmund Galea, a mortgage broker, as a creditor of Delta Law on dubious untested evidence of any debt oed to him by Delta Law and inspite of protests by Delta’s and Rozario’s lawyers. Galea claimed under oath to have lent Douglas “several millions” of dollars over years of litigation yet provided no proof and was admitted for a mere $1,600 claim instead.
PHANTOM CREDITORS -THE CASE OF ANTHONY HOPKINS OF THE NSW BAR
Investigations reveal Delta Law’s principal, Mr. Rozario, lent Douglas $50,000 during Douglas’s financial and personal turmoil, including a bitter divorce where Douglas was accused of pilfering his children’s trust funds and stealing from his instructing solicitor’s accounts with the help of Silvana Perovich a Delta Law client and clerk in the firm. Douglas had verbally threatened to withdraw from the Mango Hill arbitration before In Callinan KC if the money from Rozario wasn’t forthcoming.
Galea, meanwhile, allegedly bought the debt of Sydney solicitor Anthony Hopkins, a Douglas associate, who billed Delta Law for a two-hour call with Silvana Perovich a Delta Law client—despite never being briefed by the firm.
Rozario the sole practitioner and sole director at Delta had never met nor spoken to Hopkins till July 2022 when he telephoned Hopkins to confirm the two had neither met nor spoke to each other previously when discussing his invoice sold to Edmund Galea for purposes of stacking the Delta Law creditors meeting. Cotter was made aware of these facts yet failed to act in dismissing Galea’s claim on Hopkin’s note.
Cotter failed to scrutinize these connections, effectively stacking the creditors’ meeting to block a liquidator’s appointment, which could have probed the $20.2 million unlawful distribution by Conomos. Cotter in fact had told the Courier Mail that he had been threatened by some of the creditors before the meeting. He identified them as Conomos, Perovich and Douglas to others ivolved in the matter. Yet and inspite of these alleged problems Cotter allegedly faced, he readily accepted a payment of $370,000.00 from James Conomos in 2023. Conomos represented the “majority creditors” (and perhaps still does) in the adminstration of Delta Law. Cotter accepted the money from Conomos without notifying all existing creditors of his windfall.
STRONG ARM TACTICS TO SILENCE ANY DEBATE IN THE MATTER
Delta’s lawyer, James Lowell, provided Cotter with damning evidence on the existence of contracts between Rozario and Delta Law and Conomos’s unlawful distribution of the money in his trust over which Delta Law and Rozario had liens, only to face threats from Stephen Colditz for representing Rozario in the matter.
In 2024, Rozario endured further intimidation when Queensland police, allegedly spurred by Colditz and Keane, arrived at his home at night in September that year questioning him over blog posts labeled “criminally defamatory” by an unnamed complainant.
When questioned about the identity of the complainant suggesting it may have been Keane and or Colditz, the Police did not deny the suggestion. Rozario has denied being the author or the source of the articles and maintains that there was a security breach in 2020 or thereabouts when an extensive amount of Delta Law’s corrspondence and documents in the Mango Hill matters was leaked over the internet. He says he made reference to the hack in his responses to the Queensland Law Society, which the Society has failed or refused to investigate.