A SEQUEL TO ‘A CRIME OF LAW AND JUSTICE‘
JAMES CONOMOS’ HOLD ON THE LAW SOCIETY AND LSC- A LICENSE TO STEAL
Confidential information obtained by fleetstreet.blog inb late 2022 lay bare the frantic maneuvers of solicitor James Nicholas Conomos to insulate himself from the repercussions of his confessed malfeasance, defalcation and illicit tampering with his trust account.
Scarcely had Conomos grasped the profound severity of his transgressions, mishandling $20 million in trust funds in flagrant violation of fiduciary duties and a judicial decree, and his admissions in court that he had violated a lien over the $20 million held in his trust account, than he swiftly beseeched select officials within the Queensland Law Society (the Society) for intervention.
As divulged by a Society insider, Conomos deliberated strategies to fortify himself against Delta Law’s relentless demands for restitution of funds over which it held a duly pleaded lien, while mitigating the juridical fallout from his egregious breaches of trust accounting protocols. He implored guidance on quelling the momentum of Delta Law’s (Delta’s) quest to reclaim arbitration proceeds from BS1714 of 2011. The Society, obligingly, acceded.
It emerges that Conomos’s paramount aim was to marshal the Society’s influence to coerce Delta Law’s then-director, who asserted a lien over the disputed sums, into abandoning his pursuit, thereby enabling redistribution in accordance with legal mandates. Once more, the Society complied, withholding renewal of Delta’s principal’s practicing certificate.
Throughout, the Society possessed full cognizance of Conomos’s infractions against the Australian Solicitors Conduct Rules (ASCR) and pertinent statutes under the Legal Profession Act 2007. Yet, it refrained from imposing sanctions. Similarly, the Queensland Legal Services Commission (LSC), despite lodged complaints, demurred.
An informant further discloses that Conomos received counsel from a Society affiliate and Francis Douglas KC to exert undue influence upon Delta’s administrator, William Cotter, regarding creditor admissions. Subsequent evidence attests that Cotter, succumbing to relentless pressure from Conomos and his confederates in the breach, capitulated.
Undisclosed confidential exchanges among Khan, a solicitor at Rose Litigation Lawyers, acting for Cotter, and James Conomos revolved around orchestrating, or “stacking,” the creditors’ meeting. Conomos and Cotter shared a prior business rapport, lending credence to their collusion.
Khan abruptly departed Rose Litigation post the engineered second creditors’ meeting in 2020, amid vehement objections to Cotter’s admission of creditors whose legitimacy fell short of requisite legal standards. These included Barrister Anthony Hopkins (subsequently supplanted by Edmund Galea), Francis Douglas KC, Stephen Colditz, and an entity styled Law and Commerce Partners.
An impartial scrutiny of Cotter’s rulings at this second assembly during Delta’s administration has unequivocally determined that none, save Delta and its principal, possessed valid standing as creditors. Not a single one.
The dossier furnished by Conomos to Cotter, the Society, and affiliated counsel, including Rose Litigation, was artfully contrived: decontextualized, manipulative, and distortive of the factual chronicle precipitating Delta’s administration.
The Society, though privy to the truth, expediently embraced Conomos’s narrative to avert institutional discomfiture. At peril were the legal profession’s prestige and the sanctity of its regulatory guardians.
Evidentiary trails confirm Conomos’s direct liaisons with Lauren Fitzgerald, Peter Smiley, Bill Hourighan and other Society functionaries, who, heeding his pleas, dispatched accusatory missives to Delta’s erstwhile director and principal, Quintin Rozario alleging malpractice and unsatisfactory conduct.
Fitzgerald reportedly furnished Conomos with duplicates of the Society’s correspondences with Delta’s director. The adjudicating committee under Section 80 of Queensland’s Legal Profession Act included a solicitor from a firm previously retained by Delta but dismissed for purported incompetence.
Subsequently, Peter Smiley, representing the Society, denied renewal of the solicitor’s practicing certificate on character grounds, invoking findings by former Chief Justice Catherine Holmes in BS8866 and BS8867 of 2019.
It has since surfaced, though concealed during those proceedings, that Conomos maintained social ties with Justice Holmes, who presided over BS8866 and BS8867.
The Queensland LSC has protracted its inquiry into Conomos’s improprieties for over two years, while the Society has outright declined to probe his stewardship of the $20 million trust corpus. Instead the Queensland Law Society promoted James Conomos to its council in 2023 inspite of his admitted breaches of the ASCR and the law.
This saga illuminates a pervasive tapestry of judicial, regulatory, and institutional bias exceeding lawful bounds. In an antecedent arbitration hearing central to this imbroglio, arbitrator Ian Callinan KC, a retired High Court justice, derisively labeled Delta’s solicitor “Khemlani,” a racially tinged slur evoking ethnic disparagement. This was not isolated; yet, the Queensland Bar and Society turned a blind eye.
REVISITING THE SELECTIVE THRUST OF HOLMES J’S ADJUDICATIONS
The profound injustice of Justice Holmes’s rulings against Delta’s principal Rozario resides in her glaring omission of censure against Conomos notwithstanding Conomos’s admitted catastrophic and unlawful manipulation of over $20 million in lien-encumbered trust funds.
Equally, she absolved solicitor Richard Spencer, who conceded fabricating documents, invoices, and deeds.
Her condemnation of Delta’s solicitor hinged on subjective appraisals of his courtroom demeanor, nervous testimony, devoid of substantiation that his testimony could not be believed although she conceded that he was not dishonest.
In entreaties to the Society, Conomos beseeched them to unearth any intelligence that could undermine the character of Delta’s principal to stifle his campaign against the trust fund mismanagement.
In 2020, Conomos proffered $300,000 to Delta’s solicitor to “settle” the discord. Information procured by fleetstreet.blog implicates Silvana Perovich and Richard Spencer in abetting the Society and Conomos herein.
Undeterred, the Society permits Conomos and Spencer to retain unrestricted principal practicing certificates, despite their avowals of grave legal, ASCR, and charter violations.
DOUGLAS UNWITTINGLY BREACHES THE VEIL OF PRIVILEGE
A retired federal investigator specializing in child pornography confided to fleetstreet.blog: “The roster of barristers and solicitors illicitly disseminating confidential client and witness data, including intimate, sexually explicit pornography and salacious personal communiqués, is staggering.”
Portions of this trove were tendered to the Dyson sexual misconduct inquiry but were summarily excluded, as the probe fixated narrowly on assault allegations.
By unlawfully “droning” Delta, deploying it as a surrogate without its principal’s consent, Francis Douglas KC inadvertently invited scrutiny into his affairs, paralyzing the Society and LSC. This maneuver waived privilege over correspondences involving himself, juniors, James Conomos, Robert Whitton (trustee of Silvana Perovich’s bankrupt estate), and allied parties in the Mango Hill litigation.
Perovich, Douglas’s client, harbored an intimate rapport with him, serving as his instrument to impersonate Delta’s principal. Conomos, as solicitor for Perovich’s trustee, knowingly abetted this impropriety in the Mango Hill arbitration.
Voluminous records chronicle Perovich’s forgeries of Delta’s principal’s signature, a fact Douglas and Conomos keenly apprehended. Thereby, Douglas ensnared his juniors: Anthony Hopkins from Tenth Floor Chambers in Sydney, David Keane KC, and Stephen Colditz in Brisbane the latter duo via unauthorized direct briefings.
Hopkins falsely asserted instructions from Delta, later vending his fee invoice to Edmund Galea at Douglas’s behest. Galea wielded it to ally with Douglas, Spencer, Perovich, Keane, and Colditz in commandeering Delta’s administration.
Douglas’s droning of Delta sanctioned forensic delving into his archives, unearthing improprieties like fabricated “salvage lien” evidence, with privilege irrevocably forfeited.
OF ALPINE ESCAPADES, COURTESANS, AND FORBIDDEN EX PARTE MURMURS
Francis Douglas KC boasts a storied penchant for feminine companionship, ski sojourns, opulent vintages, gastronomic indulgences, and art acquisitions (often trifling pieces as fiscal dodges). His ex-spouse, Sigrund Baldvinsdottir, chronicled his profligacy in missives dispatched to Perovich, erroneously deeming her Delta’s conduit in their familial strife.
Through his illicit orchestration via Perovich, Douglas stripped privilege from documents spawned with juniors and cohorts in Mango Hill and ancillary matters.
THE SOCIETY AND THE QLSC: A SYMPHONY OF SILENCE
In a labyrinthine ballet of political and vocational reckoning, the Queensland Law Society, Legal Services Commissions of Queensland and New South Wales, and Queensland’s Attorney-General’s office maintain a deafening hush over the brazen embezzlement of $20 million by a cabal of lawyers, eliciting mounting skepticism.
Amid a tempest of unprobed scandals, deliberately stalled or shunned by these entities, their dereliction of statutory duties betrays complicity in fostering corruption within the bar and bench.
This tableau starkly contradicts the vaunted transparency espoused by attorneys-general and regulators, the LSC, bar associations, and QLS, in safeguarding justice and ethical oversight.
With a legal fraternity in disarray and a judiciary aflame with ineptitude, the reticence of pivotal stewards like the Attorney-General and LSC engenders grave doubts about autonomy and probity. In arenas demanding forthright dialogue, such muteness is not merely anomalous; it is profoundly disquieting.
