A TALE OF TALL TREES AND CROOKED TIMBERS

EXCEPTIONALISM – THE LAW SOCIETY- THE LSC- AND A LICENSE TO STEAL

Confidential information obtained in this matter, shows how solicitor James Nicholas Conomos’ desperate attempts to shield himself from the fallout over the defalcation of over $20 million from his firms trust account unfolded.

No sooner than Conomos had realized the gravity of his offence of having improperly dealt with $20 million in trust monies, in breach of his trust obligations and a court order, he immediately contacted certain officials of the Queensland Law Society (Society) for help in disposing of the matter.

Conomos, according to a Society insider, explored various ways on how to shield himself from agitation initiated by Delta Law ‘Delta’ for return of the money. He was desperate to soften the legal impact and reputational damage to him arising from his actions, resulting from what was fundamentally the unlawful removal of a very large sum of money from his trust account.

Delta was pursuing the return of the award money from the arbitration in BS1714 of 2011, Conomos had distributed to himself and others without proper authority. Delta’s pursuit of the money was gaining traction and publicity much to Conomos’s discomfort. Delta had a solicitor’s lien on that money.

The Society obliged Conomos. Conomos is a solicitor who has served on several of the Societies committees over the years and was voted best solicitor of the year on a number of occasions. The Society acted as if owed fealty to Conomos for his years of service to them. It was also acting to protect its own reputation from the fall out arising from Conomos’s failures.

The Society was aware at all times that James Conomos had breached the Australian Solicitors Conduct Rules (ASCR) and the law (the LPA 2007 ) in the manner in which he dealt with the $20 million he held in his firm’s trust account subject to a solicitor’s lien. Yet the Society refused to sanction Conomos. So too the Legal Services Commission in Queensland (LSC) with who complaints relating to Conomos’s conduct were lodged in 2001.

According to an informant, Conomos was also advised by a party at the Society and by Francis Douglas KC to ‘lean’ on the administrator, William Cotter, about who to admit as creditors of Delta at their second creditors meeting. Documents show that Francis Douglas KC was a beneficiary of that distribution by Conomos beyond what he was legally entitled to.

Evidence later emerged that William Cotter (administrator of Delta), weakened by pressure from Conomos and others including Douglas and Keane, caved in to Conomos’s demands.

Conomos made an undisclosed payment to the administrator Cotter, in the sum of $370,000.00 in 2023. It was a payment to Cotter to induce him to speedily end the administration of Delta. Not all creditors were notified of the payment nor kept up to date with details of what transpired behind closed doors in the administration of Delta.

There is evidence of previously undisclosed confidential correspondence between Khan, a solicitor of the firm Rose Litigation lawyers, acting for William Cotter, and James Conomos over issue of ‘stacking’ the second creditors meeting. James Conomos was well acquainted with William Cotter as the two had done business previously.

Khan (previously referred to erroneously as Shah) promptly left Rose Litigation following the controversial second Creditors meeting he engineered with Cotter in 2020.

Khan a graduate from university in the UK hails from Leed’s Bangladeshi Pakistani communities. He left Rose Litigation lawyers amid strong protests against Cotter’s decision on his advise to admit certain creditors whose bona fides failed to meet the necessary legal threshold as creditors of Delta.

Khan’s credentials and history as a lawyer were suspect and he was subsequently ‘let go’ by Rose Litigation following the Delta adminstrations fiasco.

The ‘Creditors’ of Delta admitted into the adminstration of Delta were barristers Anthony Hopkins (substituted by Edmund Galea), Francis Douglas KC, Stephen Colditz, David Keane KC and a creditor by the name of Law and Commerce Partners.

Hopkins claims he was instructed by Delta in a particular matter (a claim proved to be false). Hopkins admitted in a telephone conversation with Delta’s principal, Rozario, that he had not taken any instrructions from Delta’s principal (the sole practitioner in that firm). He admitted to being ‘instructed’ by another ‘solicitor’ at Delta by the name of Silvana Perovich. Perovich was not a solicitor at Delta. She was a volunteer worker and a client of the Delta. Hopkins and Rozario by all accounts have never meet.

Hopkins would later sell his fee invoice on that matter to Edmond Galea, a banned and unlicensed financial services operative, at Douglas’s urging. Galea then used that invoice to join Douglas, Spencer, Perovich, Keane and Colditz to stack and to control the administration of Delta.

The information Conomos supplied to administrator William Cotter, to the Society and to their lawyers including Rose Litigation, was deliberately curated, de contextualized and manipulative in its descriptions of the facts and the reality of events that led to Delta being placed in the hands of an administrator.

Conomos was in direct contact with Lauren Fitzgerald, Peter Smiley and certain other officers of the Society who in response to his request for assistance, issued a series of notices to the former director and principal lawyer of Delta, Quintin Rozario. In their correspondence they alleged malpractice, failure to satisfy character requirements and unsatisfactory professional conduct against Rozario. 

Fitzgerald, it is said supplied Conomos with copies of the Society’s correspondence she had with Rozario. The committee at the Society who decided the outcome of their investigation under Section 80 of the LPA (Queensland) against Rozario, included a solicitor from a firm that had previously acted for Delta, but was later sacked by Delta for its alleged incompetence.

Peter Smiley on behalf of the Society later refused to renew Rozario’s practicing certificate on grounds of character findings made by the former chief justice against him in BS 8866 & BS 8867 of 2019.

The Legal Services Commission in Queensland has dragged its feet for more than 2 and half years on the investigation into Conomos’s misconduct. The Society on the other hand has simply refused to investigate or sanction Conomos over his dealings over the defalcation of $20 million in trust funds in breach of the ASCR and the Legal Practice Act 2007.

JURIMETRICS AND THE NATURE OF HOLMES J’S FINDINGS

“The main aim of jurimetrics is to conduct the measurement of the judicial decisions, work, or judge’s behavior. The concept has emerged from the realistic movement which does not give priority to laws enacted by the legislative bodies but on the judge’s understanding of the law, society, and their psychology.”

The travesty of Holmes J’s findings against Rozario lies in her failure to sanction Conomos over his defalcation of trust monies, all $20 million of it. And inspite of the gravity of Conomos’s improper dealings with $20 million in trust funds, over which were solicitor’s and fruits of litigation liens, Holmes J maintained an undignified silence over the inculpatory-self incriminating- evidence given by Conomos and Spencer amounting to criminality and a breach of professional conduct. She treated Rozario as if he were on trial. BS8866 & BS 8867 were not his applications.

Holmes J ignored Richard Spencer’s admissions to having created, ‘fake documents and fake deeds‘ to underpin the ‘salvage lien’. Instead, she homed in on Rozario as a witness whose evidence in the witness box she ‘did not believe‘. At the same time she was prepared to ignore and recast factual, irrefutable, evidence of criminality by Conomos and Spencer in their testimony laid before her.

DOUGLAS OPENS A DOOR TO WAIVING PRIVILEGE

Dyson Heydon, ( to whom Douglas was a friend and legal advisor) his fellow judges at the bench, the bar and a slew of other legal professionals have not been so lucky it seems. Witnesses at their private junkets in ski resorts, aboard yachts, at secluded lodges during their trysts with prostitutes, have testified to guests at these gatherings, including some of the lawyers and judges named, often engaging in unauthorized impermissible discussions about current legal proceedings and witnesses.

Francis Douglas, by his deliberately unlawful actions of droning (suborning) Delta, opened the door to private investigations into his conduct as to how he used Delta for his own personal purposes. The information caused the Society (in Queensland) and the LSC in New South Wales to seize up.

Douglas used Delta as his “drone” without the prior knowledge or consent of Rozario. It is not the first time Douglas has suborned or droned a small firm or a junior barrister as his surrogate for his own purposes without the prior knowledge or informed consent of either.

By his actions in this regard, Francis Douglas necessarily waived privilege over correspondence between himself, his juniors David Keane KC and Stephen Colditz, solicitor James Conomos, Robert Whitton (trustee of the bankrupt estate of Silvana Perovich) Blackstone costing lawyers, Teressa Tonkin and his clients involved in the decades old Mango Hill Litigation.

There is extensive documentary evidence of Perovich’s subornation of Delta on Douglas, Kean’s, Colditz’s instructions or direction, forging Rozario’s signature in correspondence on behalf of Mio Art and Douglas. Each of Francis Douglas and his juniors, David Keane KC and Stephen Colditz were acutely aware of this practice. In the process Douglas compromised his junior barristers including one Anthony Hopkins from his chambers at Tenth floor Chambers in Sydney.

Colditz for his part would threaten Rozario’s solicitor demanding he withdraw his services to Rozario or face the prospect of Colditz calling in all his fee invoices issued to a struggling Lillas & Loel (Rozario’s solicitor) or worse still face allegations that Loel was practicing as a solicitor whilst suspended. The LSC decided Colditz’s conduct did not amount to an actionable breach.

By his conduct of droning Delta, Douglas had allowed investigators to dig deep into his personal and professional correspondence and to mine it, leading to evidence of impropriety including his manufacturing of evidence over the ‘salvage lien’ he pleaded in the mediation of the Mango Hill matter. Privilege was waived as a consequence of Douglas’s misconduct.

None of Rozario, Keane, Colditz, Douglas, Conomos, Spencer or Perovich were interviewed for this article.

Peter James Wilton and Meredith Hicks