Gasnier brothers accuse each other of lies in family feud
Lawyers for NRL legend Mark Gasnier and his brother have squared off in court accusing each of dishonesty over a family trust dispute.
NSW
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A brother of NRL legend Mark Gasnier has been accused of faking his parents’ signatures on financial documents and leaving the family trust hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket.
But the "unfortunate dispute" has seen the former St George Illawarra centre also accused of repeated lies in his sworn evidence and siphoning off money for a luxury home.
Mark and his brother, Dean, became directors of corporate entity which controls the family trust in mid-2012.
Four years earlier, in 2008, the trust had purchased a property at Woolooware using the then-NRL player's funds.
The agreement, according to court documents, was to have Dean foot the bill for developing the property until their contributions were equal.
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The renovations were completed in 2011, the year Mark retired from the NRL.
But a court-appointed referee would later conclude Dean contributed about $191,000 less than Mark, documents state.
The brothers "fell into dispute" in 2015 over the trust and were "deadlocked" before Mark launched legal proceedings in mid-2016.
They're now talking only through their lawyers, Justice Trish Henry heard.
Mark's legal team alleged $1.16m was transferred from the trust "without authorisation" over a period of years.
“Dean Gasnier admits he conducted a withdrawal and he does not know whether his parents knew about it or not," Mark's barrister Duncan Miller SC said at the first hearing on Wednesday.
Mr Miller detailed an alleged $275,000 "loan" which he says went from the trust to Dean's accounts in October 2007 at a time when his parents, John and Janeane, were still in control of the entity.
Mr Miller said bank records show the agreed interest on the loan was never paid and, three years later, the debt was “forgiven or lost or wiped or expunged” from the trust records.
“Not content to write his own loan Dean Gasnier then writes his own loan off,” Mr Miller said.
Dean also has a pattern of "imitating" signatures of his parents and other witnesses on financial documents, Mr Miller added.
"John Gasnier says he’s seen documents with his purported signature on it that isn't his own signature," he told the court.
Mark's legal team offered to "walk away" if Dean was stripped of his control of the trust and repaid $191,000 adding it would be a" remarkable proposition" for him to remain in control of the entity.
But Dean's lawyers say Mark did have knowledge of the $275,000 loan and did have access to the accounts, despite his repeated sworn evidence he was in the dark.
They produced a "data dump" that showed the NRL player was logging on to the bank accounts linked to the trust and would have seen that the account had been cleared out.
"What Mark would have seen when he logged on, as his records show … he would have seen the account had been entirely cleaned out and all that was left was a balance of some $3000," Dean's barrister Mark Ashurst SC said.
"He says he didn't (agree to the loan), he didn't have access (to the accounts). We say that's wrong."
Dean, through his lawyers, argues he was paying his brother tens of thousands of dollars in cash in both 2007 and 2010 which was then transferred into the trust.
If their arguments are found true, Mr Ashurst SC said, Mark is the one in the red, not Dean.
The matters continues.