Shane Charter wins battle with Tony Mokbel mate Tom Karas over Fitzroy townhouse
Alleged Mokbel money man Tom Karas has failed in a bid to win back possession of multimillion-dollar Fitzroy home in an ongoing stoush with convicted drug dealer Shane Charter.
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Alleged Mokbel money man Tom Karas has failed in a bid to win back possession of $3 million Fitzroy home in an ongoing stoush with convicted drug dealer Shane Charter.
The pair and Charter’s brother are locked in a battle for the keys to the Nicholson St property Karas has called home with his wife and two daughters for 15 years.
But the Charter brothers kicked him out of the home, changing the locks while he was at a funeral on January 2.
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Karas won an order allowing him back into the property from the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, then launched Supreme Court action when it wasn’t complied with.
But the Supreme Court proceeding was today dismissed with Justice Peter Riordan labelling the case “bizarre”.
“The sense is there’s a much bigger picture here I’m being quarantined from,” he said.
Justice Riordan dismissed the proceeding, finding it was appropriate for VCAT to deal with the matter.
He said if the tribunal’s orders hadn’t been complied with, it was a matter for the tribunal to resolve.
Justice Riordan said it was also right that the new tenant of the property have the opportunity to put his case to the court.
Karas, an alleged money launderer for Tony Mokbel’s brother Horty, has lived in the home for 15 years with his wife and two children and now wants a court judgment granting him possession of the property.
He says he was at a funeral on January 2 when the Charters brothers employed locksmiths to change the locks.
“That night Shane Charter called me and said ‘What do you want to do?’ I said ‘I want to get back into my house’,” Karas said in an affidavit to the Supreme Court.
“He replied ‘that will never happen’,” he said.
“All my clothing is in the house, other than what I am wearing,” he wrote in an affidavit to the Supreme Court.
“I have had to buy toiletries and will have to buy some clothing.”
Craig Charter told the court he and his brother had been trying to remove Karas from the property since August last year, when they first issued a notice to vacate.
He said Karas owed $12,000 in unpaid rent and a property inspection had uncovered significant damage.
The Charters brothers bought the home from Karas’s wife, Irene Meletsis, in 2014 through a trust operated by their company, CSC1957 Investments.
But Karas has alleged Shane Charter signed his 50 per cent stake in the trust over to Karas’s brother Bill in October.
Craig Charter has disputed that claim, accusing Karas of forging documents and illegally obtaining business records to make the transfer appear legitimate.
He said there was a $2.5 million mortgage on the property.
“I am informed by Shane, and believe, that he denies signing the transfer,” he said in his affidavit to the court.
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“He, like me, believes that the document is a forgery. There is absolutely no commercial reason why Shane or I would transfer our units in the trust … we did not do so.”
Shane Charter is a bodybuilder, biochemist and convicted drug trafficker who had a central role in the Essendon Football Club supplements saga. He supplied banned supplements used by players, which plunged the AFL team into crisis.
Karas is also involved in a legal dispute over the ownership of other homes in the same Fitzroy block.
He was accused in the Supreme Court in 2007 of being involved in a “large-scale money-laundering operation, in an attempt to cover up the extent of moneys derived from drug trafficking”.