Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal [VCAT] review: Corruption 4

Is the VCAT owners corporation list corrupt?

I give you 10 facts.

Fact 1. The owners corporation law allows managers to transfer money from the owners pool to their own private bank account. This means if a manager steals money from the pool, the Police will not act, as by the law it’s perfectly legal (OC Act, Section 27)

Fact 2. Due to how VCAT interprets privacy laws, some owners corporations can not even access their own accounts. They are forced to trust the manager.

Why does VCAT & the law refuse to allow owners to access their own owners corporation account?

Fact 3. Managers take the interest of the owners account and pay it to the Victorian Property Fund. From this fund more than a million is paid to VCAT yearly. (Eg: SCA Annual Report AGM 2014 page 18. VCAT Annual Report page 53).

Effectively, managers are stealing the owners money to pay-off VCAT.

Owners know nothing of this.

Fact 4. In 2012, the VCAT President invited managers and their lawyers to meet him on a regular basis. Since this time they have regularly met and discussed how VCAT should run cases. (Eg: VCAT Annual Report 2013-14, page 28).

Owners are not permitted to attend.

So can VCAT’s President be relied upon to protect owners when meeting with the managers and their lawyers?

Is he fair?

Fact 5. The VCAT president himself was involved in a controversial tribunal case against a property owner.
A water company cuts off the water to a property making it worthless. The water company then forces the owner of the property to sell it to them, dirt cheap. When the owner appeals for justice, the tribunal ruled that the water company had the right to do this, and orders the owner to pay all legal costs for complaining.

Yes, it was our VCAT President who represented the water company.

How did he do it?

It certainly appears that the VCAT president deliberately fabricated a mass of evidence against the owner, and presented it as fact to the tribunal. It appears the judges were fully aware of the fraud. Details of this extraordinary case, and what the President and judges got away with, is on the website courtsontrial.com

This is not an official legal website however, if the fraud allegations are false, how could someone openly get away with making false claims against our esteemed VCAT President?

Fact 5. VCAT, with the manager’s funding it, the user group, and the Presidents dubious past, and more, appears loaded with conflicts of interest

So do owners get a fair go at VCAT?

Fact 6. Owners win less than 5% of cases at VCAT (http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/vic/VCAT/).

Fact 7. This Age article titled “Rip off managers” highlights the bias against owners (http://www.smh.com.au/national/rip-off-body-corporate-managers-stay-registered-20130205-2dwj0.html).

It humorously refers to a manager who was repeatedly taken to VCAT . The manager even admitted charging owners for water supplies to individual car parks. In another case he allegedly took $10, 000 from an owners corporation’s account that had sacked him, because it was summer and he wanted air conditioners to cool himself (Not listed in article).

VCAT continually refused to rule against him. After an outcry he finally he lost a case, and in the article says he only lost because he did not turn up. With this statement, he appears to be ‘bang on the money’.

If VCAT, its president, judges, lawyers or even employees read or hear this, they will act horrified.

“You’re saying VCAT’s corrupt, how dare you… vexatious!

Vexatious is the argument that lawyers use when their crook has no defence. It’s a boring, lazy, cliché defence. It takes no skill, research or effort to claim vexatious, and it appears it’s exactly how VCAT deals with ‘difficult’ owners (VCAT Act, Sections 75, 79, 109)

Fact 8. When VCAT rules an owner as vexatious, it not only dismisses the case But orders the owner to pay all the manager’s legal costs. This can cost the owner from hundreds up to $30, 000, or more. Not only does the owner lose the case, not get back owed money, and be ordered to pay all costs, but the same manager is free to carry on ripping off the same owner

Fact 9. An overwhelming majority of lawyers not in VCAT’s inner circle, despise VCAT for its lack of due process, fairness and natural justice.

A final fact

Fact 10. Lawyer James Johnson, a solicitor and barrister of the High Court of Australia, has openly referred to VCAT as a criminal Star Chamber, and the corrupt nature of the VCAT President and others at VCAT, by name. (http://jamesjohnsonchr.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/all-the-attorney-generals-men-vcat-political-crime-spree-show-trial-j1342011/).

VCAT and its members are just another proud ‘lawyer joke’.

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