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Crooked solicitor 'ferried Foster'

AN Australian accused of helping to smuggle international conman Peter Foster from Fiji to Vanuatu on a former navy minesweeper has been unmasked as a crooked Sydney solicitor previously jailed for fraud.

AN Australian accused of helping to smuggle international conman Peter Foster from Fiji to Vanuatu on a former navy minesweeper has been unmasked as a crooked Sydney solicitor previously jailed for fraud.

Andrew Tarter, 34, who is on bail in the Vanuatu capital Port Vila awaiting trial on Customs charges, was arrested earlier this month with fellow Australians Kell Walker, a convicted Gold Coast fraudster, and Robert Lofting.

Mr Tarter claimed to be a Sydney solicitor with an unblemished reputation.

Uncannily, however, Australian courts have dealt severely with an Andrew Tatar of a similar age and legal background.

More uncanny are the photographs taken of Mr Tatar as he went to trial in Sydney's District Court in July 2002 for targeting an elderly man, George Potter, and selling $400,000 of the retiree's blue-chip stocks.

The photographs from 2002 show the Tarter now facing prosecution in Vanuatu over the smuggling of Foster - a charge Tatar/Tarter denies.

The Andrew Tatar who used a fake driver's licence and birth certificate to open a bank account in Mr Potter's name and persuade the share-trading arm of the Commonwealth Bank to offload his investments was found guilty and sentenced to four years' imprisonment.

The same Andrew Tatar directed a Gold Coast company in the late 1990s with Walker, the skipper of Retriever 1, the former navy mine-sweeper now impounded by Vanuatu authorities.

Walker, 58, was sentenced to 5 1/2 years jail in 1990 on 20 charges of uttering false documents over an elaborate $380,000 worker's compensation fraud.

It is alleged Retriever 1 was used to ferry Foster, a convicted conman, from Fiji to Vanuatu earlier this month.

Mr Tatar, a solicitor when he committed the offences against Mr Potter and other retirees, subsequently came before the NSW Supreme Court to face an attempt to strike him from the roll.

His actions, according to Chief Justice Jim Spigelman in a 2005 judgment, "would be regarded as disgraceful and dishonourable by the opponent's professional brethren of good repute and competency".

"The opponent's criminal conduct was thoroughly dishonest, and his failure in disclosure to the board deserves no less a description."

He was struck off.

But yesterday after being confronted with the documentation, Mr Tarter was unmoved.

"I'm shocked that someone is suggesting this fellow is me," he told The Weekend Australian.

"Tarter is my name, it is my father's name and it was the name of his father before him."

Hedley Thomas
Hedley ThomasNational Chief Correspondent

Hedley Thomas is The Australian’s national chief correspondent, specialising in investigative reporting with an interest in legal issues, the judiciary, corruption and politics. He has won eight Walkley awards including two Gold Walkleys; the first in 2007 for his investigations into the fiasco surrounding the Australian Federal Police investigations of Dr Mohamed Haneef, and the second in 2018 for his podcast, The Teacher's Pet, investigating the 1982 murder of Sydney mother Lynette Dawson. You can contact Hedley confidentially at thomash@theaustralian.com.au

Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/crooked-solicitor-ferried-foster/news-story/306606d669a07e2315d5d19e4b84beae