‘Lender of last resort’ Ian Lazar’s nine-year fight to prove he’s innocent
Known as the ‘lender of last resort’, Ian Lazar has spent time in jail, been accused of having links to organised crime and charged with fraud, gold bar and cattle theft. He has never been found guilty and wants people to be held accountable for his trauma.
NSW
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Ian Lazar arrived at his North Sydney office building one ordinary October morning in 2014, coffee in hand, to be greeted by a detective flashing a badge and telling him he was under arrest.
“I soon realised it wasn’t a joke. I had swarms of cops around me, grabbing my arm, one saying ‘don’t run or I will shoot you’,” he said.
“Running was the furthest thing on my mind, the comment seemed just insane. It was like they were arresting Al Capone. It was straight out of a Hollywood movie. If it wasn’t real, it would be an award winner.”
The next time the Sydney businessman could hug his family properly was more than three months later.
Mr Lazar spent a total of eight months in maximum security awaiting countless court hearings, accused of having links to organised crime, perverting the course of justice, various frauds and stealing cars, gold bars and cattle.
One by one, the 28 criminal charges he faced were withdrawn, dismissed or had verdicts of not guilty delivered.
This week the man dubbed “the lender of last resort” has exclusively revealed to The Sunday Telegraph that he is fighting back after his “devastating, drawn out ordeal” in which it has taken him nine long years to prove he is an “innocent man”.
Mr Lazar, who has drawn headlines over the years for his dealings with high-profile figures, including former deputy Auburn mayor Salim Mehajer and former senator John Williams, says he is suing the NSW Police Force for malicious prosecution and has commenced Federal Court proceedings against Vodafone, claiming his enemies were able to use unverified identification to put a SIM card in his name and fabricate evidence against him.
His lawyer, Raed Rahal, confirmed his office and counsel had been engaged in relation to commencement of proceedings against police.
In relation to Vodafone, “the proceedings are on foot”.
A NSW Police Force spokesman said it was not aware of any legal action regarding this matter.
Vodafone said it would vigorously defend these proceedings.
Mr Lazar said courts had awarded him costs in all cases that ran to trial, however, “no financial compensation can recompense” his suffering and damage to his reputation.
“They can’t give back the time I spent in jail. They can’t repair the costs to my family and what we all had to go through,” Mr Lazar said this week.
“At the end of the day, I won’t stop until I get justice for what has happened to me. I want this finalised and acknowledged on my terms.”
Mr Lazar describes himself as a lender who acts for “sophisticated investors and fund managers” whose money he lends out on six to 12 month loans to “primarily distressed borrowers”.
“A substantial part of my business is buying out existing lenders mortgages, often at a discount because the bank or the lender wants to be paid out and out of their loan book, more so than the borrower needs the debt extinguished.”
Mr Lazar says he will never know all the motivations of his accusers.
“I have my views and I have not been shy of publicly giving my thoughts on this but, at the end of the day, I am sure there are reasons I don’t know yet as well, and some I may never know,” he said.
The so-called victims in these matters were perceived as individuals. They were not. They were sophisticated borrowers with entities and at all times they had legal advice.
“My mistake was helping these particular parties when it was clear they had caused their own issues and blamed the last person in the line, which was me.”
Mr Lazar said that when it came time to pay their debts or surrender their security, they had nothing to lose.
“They actually delayed their civil matters with complaints to police,” he said.
Mr Lazar said his ordeal began the day police walked through his office door.
“From there, to create pressure, it became political, and then I responded in Hansard. I get it. Not everyone will like me but I clearly aggravated the wrong people.”
Life in jail was hell.
“There are no words to describe the mental and physical feelings one has when you are sent to jail,” he said.
“You lose all your self-dignity and your privacy, for example, from having to go to the toilet in front of five people or when you are in a cold waiting cell for up to eight hours awaiting legal visits.
“I was almost stabbed over the use of the phone.”
What still irks Mr Lazar most about his ordeal is the fact that people who don’t know him believe what they hear and read.
“They believe when the media says that I ripped off an old pensioner when not only was I not in the country at the time of the actual alleged offence, but the court found me not guilty by direct verdict with costs.
“There was no evidence to have had me even charged,” he said.
Mr Lazar defended suing the NSW Police Force and Vodafone, saying “Why not? They should be held accountable for the trauma they have caused, and explain how and why this was funded. I am a victim and my family was collateral damage.
“I wasn’t even at the birth of my first born child because I was in custody awaiting a bail application.”
Mr Lazar said that, out of the thousands of clients he has had over the years and the billions of dollars he has facilitated for clients, “the police had to dig so deep and construct the most ridiculous stories and charges in an attempt to make something stick”.
“The witnesses were given immunities for things far worse than what I was alleged to have done.”
THE LAWYERS
High profile lawyer Bryan Wrench says the story is a lesson in never quitting.
“What the police never expected is that we would contest this and fight this right to the end,” Mr Wrench said this week.
“We were willing to put ourselves out there because we knew what was happening was wrong.
“It’s easy to make the allegations and taint somebody’s career and that’s where there has to be some responsibility from people who do make those allegations, because they can destroy someone’s life.”
Mr Wrench said there was “no restart button” for Mr Lazar.
“How can you compensate for nine years? Not just nine years lost but nine years fighting to clear his name?
“As far as the prosecution is concerned, they threw everything at us, more charges, more allegations, inducements to career criminals, to people who have been found to be unreliable by ICAC. They threw everything at it but they failed to do one thing, and that is investigate the case.”
Solicitor Raed Rahal, who represented Mr Lazar in several of his matters, says there are no charges pending against his client and every single charge brought against him has been dismissed, withdrawn or a not-guilty verdict delivered.
There have also been several costs certificates issued in favour of Mr Lazar for costs he incurred as part of the prosecutions.
Mr Rahal, from Cambridge Law, confirmed he is representing Mr Lazar in the malicious prosecution case against the NSW Police and the Federal Court matter against Vodafone.
“Key documents that were produced in the proceedings as part of the brief of evidence relied upon by the prosecution that were entirely inconsistent with the allegations made, were ignored and vital potential witnesses that would have been able to discredit the allegations made were simply not approached,” he said.
With regard to Vodafone, Mr Rahal said his client would be arguing the phone company breached its statutory duties, allowing something to occur which should never have occurred if Vodafone had the proper protections and measures in place.
“Vodafone breached its obligations and the police failed to properly investigate. Proper measure would have prevented this occurring in the first place, and a proper investigation would have made it apparent that the criminal proceedings against Mr. Lazar which followed should never have been commenced”.
THE WIFE
Angeline Lazar says she has lived nine years of hell but never once doubted her husband.
“It’s taken a terrible toll on our family, our relationship, finances and health,” she said.
“It has destroyed any sense of normality. Every day for the entire period of this saga was consumed by pressure and stress and working towards finding justice.”
Mrs Lazar said there were times when she lost faith in the system but never in her husband.
“I have never lost faith in Ian and our family to get through this. I knew, and still believe, Ian did not do anything wrong. I did not realise it would take so long to get justice but never did my faith in his innocence waiver.”
Mrs Lazar said she felt in physical and mental danger, with many threats and accusations.
“Thanks to these baseless allegations, my life was made an open book for everyone to read. It was not enough that lies were being told about Ian, there were lies and false accusations made about me which meant, at times, I was required to defend myself and, as a consequence, my right to deal with this entire situation in private was not afforded to me.
“This whole drama was laid to bear intentionally in a very public manner to make sure that maximum damage was done to the lives of both Ian and I. “
Mrs Lazar said the pressure on her to raise her young child while Mr Lazar was in jail was immeasurable.
She hasn’t lost her sense of humour though and wants to look to the future and enjoy her family.
To the people who she says made terrible accusations about her husband: “I don’t think about them at all, they have taken up enough of our time. Although I will never buy a Lexus.”
THE MOBILE PHONE
Mr Lazar was accused of sending threatening text messages to Penrith car dealer Henry James.
According to the police facts sheet tendered in court, after being granted bail in January 2015, Mr Lazar persuaded the car dealer to lend him $20,000, claiming it was for his legal fees.
After 12 months passed, Mr James started agitating for his loan to be repaid.
Mr Lazar was accused of responding by sending a series of threatening text messages to Mr James, including one which said, “I’m going to burn you to the ground, I will bury you, you dog, I will burn your house down and your family in it”.
Another read, “Your wife will be a widow when I slice your throat in front of her”.
After two years of various Court hearings, all charges were withdrawn by the DPP.
“I was in the North Sydney Tunnel when the burner phone used to send the threatening SMS was being purchased in Chullora, which is 40 minutes away.”
“After $600k in legal costs and two years in court, they withdrew after five days.”
Above all else, Mr Lazar says anyone who knows him would confirm that he is “educated and would never send messages like that or speak that way”.
“They could have at least made it sound like me,” he said.
Mr Lazar said Vodafone had a “known issue with a breach in their system which was later disclosed to the public” in relation to being able to register a phone in a name with no verification of identification.
Mr Lazar said the $20,000 was for work done using his lawyers to recover $1 million owed to Mr James on a property loan he had before the two men had met.
“I recovered his money and was only part paid the $20,000. It was never a loan and this was just a version.
“He took my Mustang, didn’t pay for it and I started wind-up proceeding on his company to liquidate the business.”
HEWITT CASE
In 2014, police alleged Mr Lazar, then 43, offered to pay the debts of Nambucca Heads woman Amy Hewitt after hearing about her financial problems on a current affairs television program 11 years earlier.
They accused Lazar of secretly transferring ownership of her home to one of his companies.
Mr Lazar spent 90 days in jail, was refused bail as he waited for the case to proceed, and vehemently denied the fraud allegations.
“They said I had fraudulently transferred a property using a mortgage of an 88 year-old deceased woman’s property,” Mr Lazar said.
“You cannot transfer a property belonging to anyone using a mortgage, you have to do a contract of sale, it’s common sense,” Mr Lazar said.
“Not only was I found not guilty, I was awarded costs against the DPP. I spent 90 days in custody over this for no reason, and missed the birth of my first child”, he said.
THE $30,000 LEXUS
While on bail over the Nambucca Heads case, Mr Lazar was charged with stealing a $30,000 Lexus from music promoter Kevin Jacobsen and his wife Billie.
Mr Jacobsen had gone to Mr Lazar for financial help in 2010 after a legal dispute which saw Mr Jacobsen fall out with his brother and then business partner, Colin Joye.
According to the tendered police claims, the Lexus ended up in the hands of a prominent standover man.
“Jacobsen never owned the vehicle, it was owned by a company, KJ Pty Ltd,” Mr Lazar said.
“I had a security charge over the company, and the vehicle, for debts owed. This case never made it to trial, it was withdrawn by the DPP.”
THE GOLD BAR
In February 2022, lender Ian Lazar and businessman Achilles “Big Al” Constantinidis won an appeal against a court finding two years earlier that found them guilty of doing an act with intent to pervert the course of justice.
The men had been convicted of seeking to remove a policeman from investigating Mr Lazar over a $50,000 gold bar, which had been picked up in a late-night search of a car in Annandale. They were said to have procured a standover man, Witness B, to improperly influence a detective.
Mr Lazar always claimed to have owned the gold bar but a judge-alone trial found he and Mr Constantinidis had conspired to have a police officer removed from the investigation.
The appeal before Justices De Fagan, Fabian Gleeson and Julia Lonergan ruled the guilty verdicts were “unreasonable” and “not supported by the evidence”.
They found there was a “reasonable doubt” about the truthfulness and accuracy of evidence given by a police informant – Witness B – against both Lazar and Constantinidis.
In November last year the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal awarded costs in favour of Mr Lazar and Mr Constantinidis.
The judges noted Witness B’s “uncreditworthy antecedents, the delay and self-interest from which his police statements emerged and the absence of independent evidence to
corroborate him” and his accounts of how he had been engaged to corrupt or intimidate the police officer was “inherently incomplete and implausible”.
The costs for this case are expected to be in excess of $500,000.
FEDERAL PARLIAMENT
In 2011, Mr Lazar was accused in federal parliament of taking “people’s life savings and leaving them homeless and in dire financial straits”.
“This was the start,” he said this week.
Former Senator John Williams “used parliamentary privilege to name and shame me”, Mr Lazar said.
“This was to get support and funding from the NSW Government to start investigations on me. I responded in kind, and got my response into Hansard which is very difficult. He refused to say the same thing outside of the parliament.”
OTHER ACCUSATIONS
Mr Lazar additionally defended allegations he defrauded the wife of a known criminal. The court found there was no evidence to support the charge.
This week Mr Lazar said he had “never met, nor had any direct dealings with the said criminal”.
“The man’s wife alleged I stole $35k from her. Not only was this case dismissed by the court, I was also awarded costs.”
Mr Lazar was also accused of cattle duffing and million-dollar fraud but a judge found no evidence to support those charges.
He has been awarded costs in relation to all cases which ran to trial against the DPP.
ON BANKRUPTCY
Ian Lazar changed his name from Ian Rogut when he entered into a voluntary debtor petition in the late 1990s and insists there is “nothing sinister”.
“Lazar is my mothers maiden name. I changed it over 25 years or so ago for personal reasons,” he said.
“In 1994 I had a dispute with a creditor. I was in my twenties, very inexperienced and I wanted to move overseas and couldn’t.
“On bad legal advice I appointed a trustee to sort out alleged personal debts of $20 million and through the Administrative Trade Tribunal it was significantly reduced and legitimate creditors were paid by the trustee.”
Mr Lazar said he moved overseas for a number of years and could have annulled the bankruptcy “but I didn’t really think about it because I was living abroad”.
“I feel like the perception of being bankrupt has changed, however, the media and certain people will always magnify any issue to suit the agenda.
“This stigma of life is over because one was bankrupt two decades ago should be changed. Abraham Lincoln, Cindy Lauper, Elton John and Walt Disney all ended up bankrupt. People make mistakes.
“You do the best you can until you learn better.”
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