Deadline: Shane Charter property feud with gangland money man boils over

A decision looms in the bizarre battle over a Fitzroy house where the locks were changed to keep out a mate of the Mokbel family.

A bizarre property fight involving Essendon footy club supplements scandal figure Shane Charter and the former home of alleged gangland money man Tom Karas is about to boil over.

After years of legal to-ing and fro-ing, the Supreme Court is this month scheduled to decide the fate of a $4m Fitzroy house that the Karas family once lived in.

Biochemist Charter, who runs the Dr Ageless business, walked into the Nicholson St property in 2019 while Karas was at a funeral.

Charter and his brother, Craig, a party in the dispute, changed the locks in a move that left Karas most unhappy, though it seems there wasn’t much he could do about it.

Shane Charter, of Essendon supplements scandal infamy, had the locks changed on the $4m property.

Tom Karas had lived there for 15 years and claims he should be allowed back.

He had lived there with his wife Irene Meletsis for 15 years and went to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal and won an order allowing him back in.

That hasn’t happened and it will be left to a judge to sift through the claim and counterclaim surrounding the property’s rightful occupant.

Parties to the dispute are Craig Charter and financial industry figure Alexander Gulabovski.

Team Charter told an earlier court hearing they had been trying to get Karas out of the house for months before making their move.

They argued he owed $12,000 in rent and a property inspection had found significant damage.

Karas has previously claimed Shane Charter signed 50 per cent of the property to his brother Bill.

The Charters deny this.

Shane Charter came to prominence during the Essendon Football Club doping crisis for supplying banned supplements used by players.

In 2007, Karas was accused in the ­Supreme Court of involvement in a large-scale money-laundering operation for Tony Mokbel’s brother, Horty.

The multimillion-dollar townhouse at the centre of the dispute. Picture: Jason Edwards

Mistakes pile up in ‘rape’ debacle

The Phoenix Cooper debacle lurches on, scraping more paint off the justice system on every corner.

In what looks a lot like a case of rough justice for rough trade, the young glazing contractor was forced to suffer an ordeal over what he insists was a totally unjustified rape charge.

To his relief, a judge and jury earlier this year finally saw what a certain police officer, a certain magistrate and certain prosecutions lawyers chose not to over many months: that the case against him was flimsy from day one and should have been dropped as soon as police forensic scientists dismissed the central allegation that the young female lawyer who had picked him up in a bar had been “drugged”.

Cooper is disappointed that Office of Public Prosecutions spinners are doubling down to defend what his own lawyers tactfully label the “unusual” decision to insist on a ruinously costly Supreme Court trial — this despite lack of evidence of anything but a consensual frolic with a young lawyer who fancies sharing cocktails and cigars with a free-spending young bloke met at a trendy pick-up place.

In a testy, lengthy and possibly ill-judged exchange, a senior OPP flack has responded to last week’s Deadline item outlining Cooper’s complaint that he has been penalised $200,000 costs because a magistrate and prosecutors turned a blind eye to the weakness of the case pursued by an ideologically-driven police force influenced by alcohol-affected friends of the supposed “victim”.

The fallout from the ill conceived prosecution of Phoenix Cooper continues. Picture: David Caird

The OPP response from spinner Nicci De Ryk contained a regrettable error in claiming that Deadline had not contacted that office before publishing Cooper’s calm, considered and consistent critique of the wobbly prosecution case that has derailed his life and blackened his reputation.

The truth was that Deadline had contacted the OPP office weeks earlier and had been told, in writing, that the office had “No Comment”.

This fact had eluded De Ryk, who made many comments indeed in a 400-word reply long on rhetoric and irrelevant facts listed under the clanger “We were not asked to respond to these assertions before this article was published.” It’s called leading with your chin.

De Ryk went on to say “it is incorrect to assert that a prosecution lawyer withheld information from Phoenix Cooper’s legal team. The OPP made full and proper disclosure of all relevant material to Mr Cooper’s legal team prior to his trial.”

This looks like another blooper, given that an OPP staffer had already conceded in writing to Phoenix Cooper that a prosecution solicitor had provided redacted material to the defence that should, in fairness, have been unredacted.

None of which seems to have reached the prosecutorial spin department. Either that, or they are saying that because the mistake was discovered and “rectified” just before trial, it’s a case of “move along, there’s nothing to see here.”

In other words, “We don’t make mistakes — but if we did make one this time it didn’t do any harm anyway”.

De Ryk goes on to demonstrate more spin, neatly blame-sharing both the magistrate (who “made a decision to commit Mr Cooper to stand trial”) and the defence lawyers, who “at no time” asked that “the matter be discontinued” nor asserted their client had “no case to answer”.

Then comes the mandatory wokeness appeal:

“The assertions made about victims of crime are disappointing and out of touch with community values and sentiment. We know that coming forward with allegations of this kind is often very difficult for victims of sexual offending. To see this kind of commentary after a matter has gone through a jury trial, must be extremely disappointing for victims.”

No more disappointing than it is for a harmless, hardworking young man forced to borrow $200,000 to stop the state jailing him for daring to take home a private-school lawyer with so many friends in the County Court that his “unusual” trial had to be moved to the Supreme Court.

The real message from the OPP spin department is this: Don’t question the Ministry of Truth.

Stars clean up on ‘Money Valley’

Chris Hemsworth and Matt Damon have put in some notable performances over the years.

A Deadline spy tells us they pulled off another on the weekend at a northern New South Wales pub.

The Hollywood superstars were carrying on like the rest of us punting battlers when they kicked and yelled home the Moonee Valley quaddie, made spicy by Spanish Tides saluting at huge odds in the first leg.

This means Chris’n’Matt — as mug punters call them at the track — probably made a bigger killing than the actual owners. One of them was a roof tiler, who had plenty on Spanish Tides at her previous start at Flemington two weeks earlier when she reared at the start and cost herself any chance.

The fact she started on Saturday at $41 and not $7 suggests the owners didn’t have a fortune on her. Luckily, though, the Hollywood battlers got to fill up their accounts. Because they really need it.

Matt Damon and Chris Hemsworth are keen on sport and apparently successful at punting.

Spanish Tides inches to the front at Moonee Valley. Picture: Getty Images

No licence, no drama

Recent photos published in the media showed a Victorian crime figure cruising around at the wheel of a car while on holidays.

Nothing wrong with hitting the road for a trip interstate but it might be wise not to post the evidence when, word has it, you have no licence.

Speaking of which, it seems traffic police always get their man. But it can take time.

Last Wednesday, Casey Highway Patrol pinged a white Hyundai near Dandenong driven by a 74-year-old who lost his licence in 1978 and never bothered to go through the formality of getting it back. That’s 44 years, you’d think, that he’s been driving happily unlicensed.

This reminds Deadline that one of the most notorious sex killers in jail, Raymond “Mr Stinky” Edmonds, drove without a licence for most of the 19 years between when he murdered Garry Heywood and Abina Madill near Shepparton in 1966 and his arrest in 1985.

He was worried about showing up on databases and deliberately smudged addresses and dates and places of employment and moved jobs and houses regularly.

In the end, though, Edmonds caught himself by exposing his private parts in Albury’s main street. If he hadn’t done that, it’s possible he might never have been nabbed.

Informer’s stable employment

There is indiscretion and then there is self-harm. Deadline has just heard the story of a police witness who couldn’t keep a low profile, even if it meant risking death.

The said informer had helped gangland investigators with a major case involving very heavy figures some years ago.

He was told to get out of town and stay out of sight.

Some time later, a group of the same police were drinking and watching the races at a local pub.

In the parade ring at an interstate meeting was a familiar figure leading one of the runners.

It was their man, defying their advice by getting his face flashed nationally all over a network that almost every crim loves to watch.

A pair of sunglasses and a cap would have made all the difference. But it’s too late now.