The colourful world of Mick Gatto lawyer Pat Lennon

Pat Lennon’s client list includes underworld royalty Mick Gatto and former champion jockey Danny Nikolic — but the high-profile lawyer now faces financial ruin.

Pat Lennon has links to Danny Nikolic and Danny Awad.

This week could end high-profile lawyer Pat Lennon’s career in law.

But if it does, it will not be because of any action by Legal Services Commissioner, Fiona McLeay.

Nor will it be because he allegedly tried to bully a barrister who has been accused of running a globe-spanning fraud ring.

And it will not be because of charges Lennon faces of allegedly possessing and trafficking 11 grams of methamphetamine — a charge he denies and plans to fight at trial.

Instead, Lennon’s lump of Christmas coal will be delivered by two barristers, Adam Baker and Spike Buchanan, who claim he owes them a total of $54,000 in fees.

They’ve moved to bankrupt him in the Federal Circuit Court and, barring a last-minute settlement, the case is to be heard on Thursday.

Being declared bankrupt in relation to your legal practice is one of the ways the LSC can kick a lawyer off the roll, without having to prove they’ve done anything wrong.

Why McLeay hasn’t already disciplined Lennon and his wife, Jane, has confounded many in the legal profession given the serious findings courts have made against them and her loans company, Argyle Lending, over the past two years.

Jane Lennon with Pat Lennon. Picture: Facebook

In addition to involving allegations of misconduct, the cases also provide a glimpse into the couple’s complicated world.

Lennonland includes some high profile figures, like former jockey Danny Nikolic, who Lennon has represented in debt collection matters and defended — with some success — against efforts by racing authorities to ban him from the industry.

Nikolic is the former son-in-law of Sydney racing trainer Les Samba, whose 2011 murder on a suburban Melbourne street remains unsolved (in 2012 Nikolic told a racing board hearing he had “nothing to do with Les Samba getting murdered”).

He’s also the brother of John Nikolic, who’s currently doing 23 years in a Fijian jail for smuggling $30m worth of coke on a yacht named Shenanigans.

Nikolic — the jockey, not the drug smuggler — has provided money for Argyle Lending to make loans at bargain rates that start at just 20% a year.

Tania Hyett and Danny Nikolic. Picture: Norm Oorloff

Danny Awad and his wife Sarah Gatto. Picture: Facebook

Another Danny, Danny Awad, the son-in-law of underworld figure Mick Gatto, has also supplied funding to Argyle Lending, court papers show.

Awad is currently on bail awaiting a fresh trial after the High Court last month freed him from jail, where he was serving 10-15 years for attempting to possess 22kg of cocaine police allege was smuggled into Australia in printers.

Gatto himself is perhaps Lennon’s most famous client. Lennon’s firm represented the underworld figure in a failed defamation case against the ABC that went all the way to the High Court, which threw out an application to appeal last month.

Mick Gatto at Shane Warne’s memorial service at the MCG in March 2022. Picture: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

But not everyone Lennon crosses paths with is a friend or client.

Someone allegedly belted him up in broad daylight on a city street last month.

And in 2020, he was accused in court of threatening barrister James Podiaridis, a witness in a case involving Argyle Lending, including by calling him a “fat c***”.

In Federal Court proceedings, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission last year accused Podiaridis of reaping more than $1m from his role as part of a criminal syndicate that sold fake corporate bonds branded with household names including Telstra and Qantas.

Podiaridis is related to the woman Argyle Lending was pursuing in the case, Maria Lantouris. She’s the sister of Nick Sevdalis, a bankrupt former doctor who once hid from health regulators in the bathroom during a raid and destroyed documents. Also involved in the case was property developer Nick Bochrinis, whose home was firebombed in 2018 and who is currently before the courts charged with assault and extortion with a threat to inflict injury as part of a vigorous debt collection effort.

The Legal Services Commissioner is also engaged in a vigorous debt collection effort against Lennon. He owes her $25,000 for providing information about complaints made about him to another person as part of a Magistrates Court case that can’t be reported.

But, as seems to be a theme, progress has been slow. Lennon is challenging the bill in the County Court, where on Wednesday his barrister, Stephen Warne, said that “the courts have no power” to make Lennon pay.

Does anyone? We may find out on Thursday.

Originally published as The colourful world of Mick Gatto lawyer Pat Lennon