Covid NSW: Zoran Radovanovic charged after travelling to Byron Bay

The man allegedly responsible for putting Byron Bay areas into a snap lockdown was convicted of shocking crimes in Victoria.

Byron Bay’s patient zero is a Sydney businessman with convictions for drugs, burglary and forgery who immigration authorities once claimed had arrived in Australia on a false passport.

Zoran Radovanovic, 52, successfully fought a government bid to cancel his visa and send him home to Yugoslavia with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal finding he had a capacity to make a contribution to Australia.

NSW Police on Wednesday charged him with breaching public health orders after he allegedly travelled from Sydney to the Byron Bay area without a reasonable excuse in contravention of public health orders.

A drive-through Covid-19 testing clinic at the Cavanbah Centre in Byron Bay on Monday.

He is in Lismore Base Hospital being treated for Covid having travelled to the Byron Bay area with his two children, who have also tested positive to the virus. He has been served with a Future Court Attendance Notice to appear at Lismore Local Court on Septemebr 13.

His criminal history was revealed in the AAT in 2000 when he was given the benefit of the doubt and the “finely balanced exercise of discretion” to remain in Australia with his wife Tiana MacDowell, against whom he has recently been accused of breaching a restraining order taken out by police to protect her.

He has made regular appearances before the courts in relation to a series of domestic violence charges.

In 2018 he pleaded guilty to two separate counts of common assault and two separate counts of contravening a restraining order and was placed on a good behaviour bond for 12 months, ordered to complete 100 hours of community service and fined $500.

Most recently he was charged with destroying or damaging property and breaching a restraining order taken out by police to protect Ms MacDowell. He will face a hearing over the destroying or damaging property charged in Downing Centre Local Court on October 28.

The family recently moved from their home in Woodside Grove, Frenchs Forest on the Northern Beaches which they sold for $2.25 million and moved to Rose Bay.

The lack of people on the streets in Byron Bay has seen many businesses close during the lockdown.

In February 1992, he was convicted in Melbourne’s Prahran Magistrates’ Court of two counts of burglary, theft and theft of a car. He was sentenced to six months’ jail on each charge to be served concurrently. The sentences were suspended for 12 months.

He told the AAT that he was not guilty but took the advice of his then-lawyer that “it would be quicker and cheaper to plead guilty”.

Immigration documents show he left Australia on March 1, 1992 with Tiana MacDowell, who had changed her name from Tijana Simic. They cleared customs at the same barrier and were cleared by the same custom’s officer but Radovanovic denied having left the country and returning on a false passport as alleged by immigration authorities.

“Movement records do not show that the applicant re-entered Australia after March 1 1992 by the name Zoran Radovanovic,” the AAT said in a judgment handed down in Melbourne in 2000.

In April 1998, immigration officers and police, acting on information he was in Australia unlawfully, raided the St Kilda flat where he lived with Tiana and as they searched for his passport, they found about 40 young marijuana plants.

He was convicted at Prahran Magistrates Court of possessing cannabis, growing cannabis, using cannabis and forging a birth certificate.

Main Beach in Byron Bay on the first day of lockdown.

Radovanovic claimed he had last seen his passport two years earlier and he was not sure whether it was lost or stolen, the AAT said.

He was refused a bridging visa in May 1998 but was later granted a visa on various conditions including that he leave in June 1998.

He married Tiana in July 1998 and he applied for a permanent residency on spouse grounds. Again this was refused which is when he appealed to the AAT.

In his time in Australia, Radovanovic has lived in Lightning Ridge under the name Zoran Cuk, according to the AAT decision.

In overturning the decision to cancel his visa, the then-AAT deputy president B M Forrest said he believed witnesses who said Radovanovic lived in Lightening Ridge during the period immigration authorities said he had left the country.

He said he was prepared to “accept as a probability” that he did not leave Australia and return on a false passport while not rejected evidence of immigration records or accepting Radovanovic’s evidence “unequivocally”

“I have considerable reservations about his evidence,” the AAT said.

“Only he (and probably those closest to him) know the truth of events and I am not convinced that he was being candid in his evidence about matters which he perceived may have been to his disadvantage to disclose. Such an approach does little to instil confidence that a person has the inherent qualities of good character.

“I regard the applicant’s evidence of his passport being either lost or stolen as unconvincing.”

Mr Forrest said despite finding he did not “pass the character test”, there was evidence of his good character.

“Having considered all of the evidence and submissions and the matters required ... to be taken into account, the competing considerations for the exercise of discretion are finely balanced,” the tribunal said.

“I have come to the conclusion that the balance falls ever so slightly on the side of an exercise of discretion in favour of the grant of a visa. “