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 and growing unaccountability on the part of administrators, after trustee lawyer James Conomos misappropriated $20 million of funds placed in his care by a court. The Supreme Court of Queensland
Despite irrefutable evidence of James Conomos attempts at misleading the court, violating a court order, solicitor’s lien, and Australian Solicitor Conduct Rules, William Cotter, swayed by Justice Catherine Holmes’ prejudiced doubts about Quintin Rozario’s contract with Delta Law, rejected proof of their binding agreement. This contract entitled Rozario to fees for 12 years on the Mango Hill case. In a grave injustice, Cotter slashed Delta and Rozario’s $11.38 million claim for legal services to $7.6 million, allowing only $1.
Cotter preferentially recognized lawyers Francis Douglas KC, David Keane, Stephen Colditz, and Sydney barrister Anthony Hopkins, an associate of Douglas, as legitimate creditors entitled to vote, disregarding their prior substantial payments. Cotter failed to scrutinize Hopkins’ claim, despite objections from Rozario’s then-lawyer, Scott Web. Rozario, unaware of Hopkins and never having instructed him, confirmed this in a 2022 recorded phone conversation, a fact Hopkins himself conceded.
A complaint against both Anthony Hopkins and Francis Douglas KC, 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’.
Cotter’s most flagrant lapse was admitting mortgage broker Edmund Galea as a creditor of Delta Law based on unverified, dubious evidence of any debt owed, despite vehement objections from Delta’s and Rozario’s counsel. Galea, under oath, claimed to have lent Douglas “several millions” over years of litigation, yet furnished no substantiation, securing creditor status for a mere $1,600 claim—purportedly acquired from Anthony Hopkins’ alleged debt.
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.
Cotter neglected to examine these affiliations, strategically orchestrating the creditors’ meeting to thwart a liquidator’s appointment, which might have investigated Conomos’s $20.2 million illicit distribution ad Cotter’s own misconduct in the adminstration of Delta Law. Despite alleging threats from creditors Conomos, Perovich, and Douglas, as confided to the Courier Mail and others involved, Cotter accepted a $370,000 payment from Conomos in 2023. Representing the ‘majority creditors’ in Delta Law’s administration, Conomos facilitated this payment, which Cotter received without disclosing it to all creditors.
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.