Jury in trial of ex-NT Elders real estate head considering verdict
BREAKING: THE jury in the Supreme Court trial of top real estate agent Chris Deutrom has retired to consider its verdict
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BREAKING: THE jury in the Supreme Court trial of top real estate agent Chris Deutrom has retired to consider its verdict.
Supreme Court Justice Jenny Blokland yesterday finished summing up the case to the jury who will now begin assessing whether Deutrom, 50, is guilty of defrauding more than $200,000 from national real estate giant Elders while head of its Territory operations.
During the trial Deutrom, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, admitted he lied to his bosses in a moment of “panic” when he was first being probed for allegedly siphoning off money he was not entitled to.
But he also testified that he believed he had the authority to spend thousands in company money on overseas trips for staff.
“I believe I had the authority to do it and I still believe I had the authority to do it,” he said.
“I had full autonomy in the business.”
He told the jury he had never been in trouble with the law beyond “a couple of parking tickets and a couple of speeding fines”.
Mr Deutrom said he did “everything” to turn the local arm of the business around, including “buying paint at Bunnings and painting the office”.
“I worked seven days a week,” he said.
He said credit card statements did not go “even close” to showing the money he had spent on staff over the years.
He said he only paid back $90,000 to Elders after his termination as part of a “calculated” legal strategy in which he said Elders would ultimately have to pay him between $900,000 and $1 million.
The trial had heard Deutrom was “frantic” when he rang the man investigating him to “confess” misusing company money.
Elders zone operation manager Tim Walker told the second day of Mr Deutrom’s trial last week of an early morning phone call in October 2016.
“Chris … Mr Deutrom called me,” he said.
“He said, ‘Tim, I need to tell you something. I haven’t had a wink of sleep all night’.”
Mr Walker told the court Mr Deutrom went on to “confess” to taking “about another $145,000” in advertising rebates from the NT News and real estate site realestate.com.au, which were meant to be paid to the company.
“He said that they were from rebates, that he had got himself into financial trouble and that he needed to confess all of that,” Mr Walker told the court.
Asked whether Mr Deutrom provided any details of his “financial trouble”, Mr Walker said: “he said that just his commitments and he’d built a house and all those sorts of things”.
“He said that he was hoping that he would be able to sell his house and pay back the funds and no one would ever know about what had occurred.”
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