The Minister for Fair Trading, Merri Rosed was jailed for 3 months for Blackmailing Premier Peter Beattie, disgraced as an alcoholic, her and the Premier are accused of having an affair, she abused her priveleges as a minister in many ways.
Yet I was cleared by the Federal Court, my properties have doubled in value like I said they would and I am still considered the bad guy. How Fair is this?
The office of fair trading was hardly fair when it came to dealing with me, here is my side of the story on how they won a $244,000 judgement against me.
Firstly I begged them to give me a full license as I was selling 150 properties per month and I knew the laws, they refused me, we had a full time real estate licensee anyway so I left it at that.
Then they sent the UNTOUCHABLES down, this was a special task force set up to close me and other marketers down. The Governement told every paper and TV station that would listen that they would close us down and that would be the end of us and we were obviously doing something illegal as Herriots Valuations showed we were selling overpriced properties, the media said so, and obviously we can not do something better than all of the normal agents. After all we were bringing Hundreds of Millions worth of investment into the Queensland economy, providing 400 jobs ourselves and thousands in the construction industry. So obviously we should be attacked ny the Minister for Fair Trading and have bullshit stories published about us in the newspapers.
The untouchables went through our offices for months with a vengeance, rude to start with, and came up with nothing, giving us a clean bill of health. There was nothing that we were doing wrong. This was never reported on or spoken about, there were no headlines not even a page 57 10 line paragragh, absolutely nothing.
Lawyers read the reports from the media and got together 5000 clients, (not difficult when you promise money and you do not have to make a real loss only get a low valuation) of which only 40 were from my companies. They went to the real estate tribunal, which the head of the Law Society condemned in the Newspaper as a Kangaroo Court, it was not a real court but was made up of my Real Estate Agent competitors who could not sell 4 properties a month and we were selling over 150, so it was obvious to them we were doing something wrong rather than helping people save tax and build wealth. The Real Estate agents could not understand how we could do so much better than they were, so as per the great Australian Tall Poppy Syndrome, they decided to cut me down.
Out of the 5000 claims only 8 were ever heard and coincidentally all 8 were from my 40 clients who had made a claim, we had sold 4000-5000 properties at this stage, but most were happy and did not claim.
Coincidentally one of the purchasers was the same as the one who was in the ACCC case which is on the ACCC page, the Federal Court Judge rejected a Valuation for $135,000 as being to low and biased as the ACCC neglected over 250 new property sales to get a low valuation they could use it in court, they rebriefed the valuer 3 times to get what they wanted. The judge also found there was "NO EVIDENCE TO SUGGEST MR BILBOROUGH HAD SOLD OVEPRICED PROPETIES". Yet listen to what happened with the OFT tribunal. The Federal Court case had thousands upon thousands of documents, and heard many witnesses, it took 5 weeks and cost all parties about $10 Million, the OFT hearings took about 20 minutes each and Herriot was the main "expert witness" and they relied upon his valuations.
They got a valuer, Mr Herriot again, who valued the property at $90,000, (strange how they accept $90,000 yet the Federal Court Rejects $135,000 as being to low) when the property we sold was worth $159,900, and the Federal Court found this was a realistic price. The OFT Tribunal with all there wisdom then gave back to the purchaser $125,000 which was calculated as the difference between the selling price and the valuation plus all outgoings paid by the owner but did not allow for any incoming rent. Not a bad gift, and the way in which it was worked out was pure mathematical genius obviously.
Remember the people had not suffered a loss and had not sold the property, they sold it after the ACCC and OFT matters for $175,000. So the people ended up receiving $300,000 after only paying $159,900, if they ould have kept it for the 10 years we suggested they would have another $150,000.
Now that should have been the end of it, we had not defended the OFT Tribunal matter as it was ridiculous and impossible to deal with. We also new that the company they had claimed against had no money and I was not personally liable, so we did not defend the matter.
How could you defend it when they refuse to accept the Federal Court Decision that a Valuation of $135,000 is to low and they willingly accept $90,000 as a valuation. They then sued me personally and subsequently lost 100% in the District Court. This should have been the end of it again for me and the 5,000 purchasers should have got back their $125,000 each costing the Queensland Governement about $600Million, it would have cost Billions as more would have joined, after all it was money for nothing, no real losses just a low valuation.
There were 8 of these people who got about $125,000 each back, and after I contacted Premier Peter Beattie through Greg Rudd, Kevin Rudd's Brother, urgent parliament was called which stopped any more claims occuring as it could have bankrupted the Queensland Govenrment and was clearly ridiculous for the people to Buy a property for $159,900 get a cheque from Qld Taxpayers for $125,000 and then sell the property for $175,000. Obviously the QLD Premier agreed with this or he would not have changed the laws.
This should have been the end of it for me again, however at the same time the law stopped people from claiming and it also made a Retrospective law that made me become personally liable. As all 8 claims were against my companies no other directors can be personally liable and nobody else can claim as the ability was taken away by the legislation.
So I have a law in Queensland that only applies to me and me only which I can not defend because the tribunal hearing happened years ago and the law was not written at the time, so I could not defend against a law that was not written when I ran the case. The OFT won 2 out of the 8 cases only however because of technicalities and I was made responsible to repay the fund to the tune of $244,000 which I paid.
That is how they won the case against me, pretty easy when you rewrite the laws after you lose in court, sounds fair? I have had advice that I would win this back if I went to the High Court and appealled that the Judgement was against the Laws of Natural Justice as a Governement should not make a law for Just one person, especially after it lost the case in the District Court. Sometimes though you get sick of being in the David and Goliath fights.
There were about 20 other people they could have chased, such as the salespeople, finance people and others that were named in the original Tribunal hearings, far easier than me, and that was before the retrospective laws were written. They have never even issued proceedings against them where I had about 4 rounds in court. They could still chase those people for the other 6 refunds they made, they have never even attemted to go to court to recover this money.
Hardly seems fair from the office of FAIR Trading. Were they out to get me or am I just being Paranoid?
