Love for Life

Note: We are waiting for a copy of the full story to publish, so in the meantime we have cut and pasted information from a letter by Dr Evan Jones to ACCC and an article by South Australia's Channel 7 Today Tonight Program.

Dr Evan Jones

The common variety bank malpractice was also alive and well in the 1980s. Indeed, it was the cumulation of individual cases brought to the attention of the then Democrat Senator Paul McLean that led him to champion the cause of bank victims in Parliament. Then, as now, Parliament was little interested.

The publicly-owned Commonwealth Bank figured prominently in the cases brought to the attention of Senator McLean. These days, the National Australia Bank has the distinction of topping the malpractice tables, by a considerable margin.

Channel 7's Today Tonight program ran an episode on the 5th April 2006 dealing with three NAB casualties. The program was put together by Today Tonight's Adelaide producer, Frank Pangallo, after he was approached by a South Australian builder against whom NAB had reneged on an insurance contract after an injury to the builder. Pangallo sensed an injustice, and used a program that has a reputation for trivia to handle an issue that is neglected by more respectable outlets.

The program went to air in April, but only in South Australia. Curiously, the program did not go to air, as scheduled, in the other States, not least because the other two cases on the program emanated from Queensland. One of these cases was the McMinn child care centre case, documented in my dossier. Nothing that should concern us here, says your letter. Yet the McMinns received an offer of $1,700,000 for the centre, which the Bank prevented the McMinns from accepting, and the receiver/Bank subsequently sold the property for $1,180,000, leaving a residual debt that conveniently swallowed up the McMinn family home along the way. It is this kind of detail that should alert inquiring minds as to the nature of this conflict.

The third case on the Today Tonight program was that of the Troianis. Sante Troiani ran a highly successful brick business out of Bundaberg, building up substantial business and property assets of many millions of dollars. The evidence points to not your garden variety malpractice but a strategic 'sting' operation (to use the expression of my collaborator John Salmon), in which the NAB induced Troiani to shift his business to the NAB (in late 1993), after which Troiani's business was systematically defrauded.

Belatedly, the April 2006 Today Tonight program, albeit edited, appeared in the Eastern States and Western Australia on 4 January of this year. In the ensuing couple of weeks, Pangallo was inundated with phone calls and emails from people who considered themselves victims of bank malpractice, all by NAB except for a Westpac case. The number is well over one hundred.

On the Today Tonight program, NAB executive Ahmed Fahour acknowledged that there were problems that needed attention. That mild contrition was not to last. The NAB had published in the Melbourne Age under Fahour's name on the 23 January a panegyric to the company, citing its brilliant socially aware contribution to community support. The NAB then wheeled out its public relations flak to pronounce that 'NAB has a very good relationship with millions of Australian customers and it is in the bank's interest to see those customers and their businesses succeed. On rare occasions businesses regrettably fail and disputes do sometimes arise, however, NAB works hard to resolve those situations to the satisfaction of all parties.' In short, pure spin. Business as usual.

The Commonwealth Bank is not to be outdone by the NAB's 'competitive advantage' in malpractice. Cases in the last ten years, some of which have dragged on until recently, include Muirhead in Queensland (primary producer), Cooke in Queensland (medical centres), Timms in New South Wales (negligent advice in business purchase) and Heinrich in South Australia (primary producer). Muirhead and Cooke shared the same corrupt lending manager. The CBA was particularly active in maltreatment of customers of its small business subsidiary Commonwealth Development Bank in the mid 1990s in the course of restructuring then closing down the CDB – Tratzea in New South Wales (horticulture) and Cassegrain in New South Wales (property development) are notable cases of transparent skullduggery.

Channel 7 Today Tonight
Banks
Reporter: Frank Pangallo
Broadcast Date: 6 Apr 2006

Corporate icons don't come any bigger than the NAB...a business worth 50 billion dollars...and for that reason. It wields enormous power and influence.

Right now, it’s re-inventing itself though a massive campaign costing millions of dollars. CEO Ahmed Fahour admits it was an organisation that had a bad culture within and had lost touch with its customers. But it seems the nab isn't doing much to atone for its terrible sins of the past which wrecked the lives of ordinary, hard-working Australians who had put their trust...and life savings.. in them.

Associate professor Evan Jones, an economist at Sydney University has documented many cases where the NAB stands accused in court and in parliament of acting... unconscionably...unethically...and corruptly.

Professor Jones says getting justice against banks is almost impossible because the courts and judges seem to give them an easy run.

We have investigated three cases where the NAB has sent former valued and independently wealthy customers to the wall, leaving them penniless and dependent on welfare...but still fighting for some justice.

Their stories will shake your confidence in the fairness of our court system with extremely serious allegations about the bank's practices and conduct.

Sante Troiani wasn't even an NAB customer when he collected the bank's major ethnic business award in 1993 life couldn't have been any better then for the uneducated Italian immigrant made good his brick business was booming and he was worth one hundred million dollars. The award was the sweetener the bank needed to win him over and it worked.

The NAB gave him vast sums of credit but within six years the bank took him to the cleaners, convincing Queensland’s Chief Justice Paul De Jersey that Mr. Troiani had defaulted on his loans and breached his terms, much hinging on bank evidence that wasn't challenged, according to Col Walker who's helping the Troianis.

‘You have to ask yourself what the onus of proof means anymore,” says Walker.
The company, which had been valued at 80 million dollars, was soon sold off by receivers for less than four million dollars. Then they bankrupted Sante and his wife Rita.

Retired NAB manager turned investigator John Salmon says the Troiani case is the worst he has seen in 18 years of investigating banking malpractice. He believes the bank devised a sting operation to deliberately bring down Mr. Troiani’s business, an assertion denied by the bank.

Salmon has put together an intriguing paper trail, which reveals Mr. Troiani’s business was not insolvent and should never have been put into receivership. He has also uncovered evidence of a secret account-or shadow ledger kept by the bank where large sums of money were siphoned of and never accounted for.

Queensland MP Chris Foley has tabled hundreds of documents containing John Salmon's serious allegations of corrupt and deceitful conduct by the bank Mr. Foley and Col Walker are determined to see justice prevail for the Troanis.

In the meantime, millionaires-cum-paupers Sante and Rita live in hope in a rented house. They get by on a pension, selling flowers from a small plot of dirt they lease, a far cry from the life of luxury they once led in Bundaberg.