‘Lies, speculation’: Zarifi Lawyers blasted for bringing ‘futile’ visa case before AAT

A law firm that has championed dozens of cases amid Labor’s ongoing immigration woes has been accused of trying to make money from non-citizens ‘desperate’ to avoid deportation.

A firm which has championed dozens of cases amid Labor’s ongoing immigration woes has been blasted for lying to a tribunal.

A law firm that has championed dozens of cases amid Labor’s ongoing immigration woes has been blasted for lying to a tribunal and exploiting a client and accused of trying to make money from non-citizens “desperate” to avoid deportation.

Zarifi Lawyers was rebuked in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal last week for failing to inform client Alovale Junior Leo’o Olo that his hopes of remaining in Australia under Labor’s new Direction 110 were “futile”, after he threw his ex-partner against a wall.

Senior AAT member Rebecca Bellamy criticised the firm’s lack of integrity in taking on Mr Leo’o Olo’s case and said it had attempted to “manipulate” the Tribunal by trying to persuade it with “lies, speculation or exaggeration”.

“There is money to be made from non-citizens who are desperate to avoid deportation, and whose loved ones are prepared to contribute their savings to pay a lawyer or migration agent to take their case to the Tribunal,” she said.

“There is much less money, but a good measure of integrity, in competently assessing a non-citizen’s prospects of overturning a visa cancellation and, where their prospects are futile, advising them to keep their money.

“Mr Leo’o Olo is going back to his country of origin. It is not a country that is poor, unstable, war-torn, barbaric or oppressive. It is New Zealand.”

Zarifi Lawyers is one of the most prominent immigration firms representing non-citizens who have taken the Albanese government to court in the wake of the High Court’s landmark NZYQ decision, and amid the Direction 99 debacle.

The firm represented Iranian man ASF17, who failed in a High Court bid to be released from immigration detention after he refused to be deported. It has represented a number of criminal non-citizens, including a Polish drug smuggler known as CZA19, released as a result of NZYQ.

The firm also acted for S151, who challenged strict curfew and ankle bracelet conditions imposed on him after being freed from immigration detention following the NZYQ decision.

Mr Leo’o Olo came to Australia from New Zealand just over 10 years ago, when he was 14.

The Tribunal heard that in 2017 his then partner took a domestic violence order out against him. Six months later, he contravened it when he forcefully threw her phone at the ground, smashed it, and called her a “f..king slut”.

He was sentenced to two years in prison in 2022 for grievous bodily harm, having punched a stranger in a 7-Eleven parking lot so hard he broke his jaw.

When police located him to question him about the attack, they searched his home and found methamphetamine, cannabis, a water pipe and an electric grinder. Mr Leo’o Olo said the drugs were for personal use.

His parole was cancelled a few months later after he threw his ex-partner on to the side of a bed so hard that she bounced into a wall and left a hole in it.

He was charged with assaults occasioning bodily harm and wilful damage, and served the balance of the sentence for grievous bodily harm in prison.

In September 2023, while he was in prison, he was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for nine months for the later offences but the sentence was suspended.

Mr Leo’o Olo enlisted Zarifi Lawyers to try to overturn the decision to cancel his visa.

Ms Bellamy found multiple acts of family violence in five years was “frequent”, and there was a marked increase in seriousness of the offences over time.

In handing down her decision, she said she would not “waste time and Tribunal resources” in detailing “every disingenuous utterance” made on behalf of Mr Leo’o Olo.

“If that results in an appeal, it would create an opportunity for the Federal Court to provide clarity in this jurisdiction about the extent to which the Tribunal is required to engage with material that is obviously lacking in merit, particularly in circumstances where the sheer volume could raise a suspicion that there was an intention to create appeal points,” she said.

Ms Bellamy said Mr Leo’o Olo’s new partner, Jessie Parke, gave false evidence in saying he “contributed to rent and bills” when trying to prove his deportation would have a devastating financial effect on her and her children.

She eventually conceded he simply “pays for other items, which makes it easier for her to afford the rent and bills”.

“Those items include ‘nice lunches, nice dinners’, items for her children and petrol,” Ms Bellamy found. “The applicant also helped around the house and spent time with her children, which took some … load off her.”

She did not accept the “exaggerated” evidence of three of Ms Parke’s cousins and her half-sister who, having “identified themselves as Indigenous Australians”, likened the separation of Mr Leo’o Olo from Ms Parke and her children to the Stolen Generation.

The Tribunal heard the half-sister submitted: “I have witnessed how this dark chapter of history has torn apart families, eroded trust and inflicted immeasurable pain on those closest to me. The thought of Jessie and her children enduring yet another loss, reminiscent of the forced separations endured by our ancestors, fills me with a deep sense of sadness and anger.”

Ms Bellamy also found Mr Leo’o Olo’s mother gave “fanciful evidence” in claiming he would be “pressured by her two brothers to join the Mongrel Mob if he is removed to New Zealand”. “The applicant went along with that … up to a point. His mother stuck with her narrative when challenged, and she had an answer for everything, no matter how outlandish,” she said. “However, she could not keep her story straight.”

She also found Mr Leo’o Olo’s boss, like his mother, was determined “to construct a narrative … favourable to the applicant’s prospects of getting his visa back”.

Zarifi Lawyers was contacted for comment.