When Trish McInnes attempted to visit her 82-year-old father Joe Lagan, a wealthy property developer, in Gosford Hospital last Christmas, she was shocked when informed she needed permission from a man she’d never met, Valentino Kovacic.
Kovacic, 56, who is trying to stave off an eighth attempt to bankrupt him, not only has Lagan’s power of attorney but under the terms of Lagan’s enduring guardianship, he can determine whom Lagan “should have contact with” as well as “whether to consent to the use of physical and/or chemical restraint” to protect Lagan from self-harm.
McInnes was even more shocked to discover her father’s missing black Porsche Macan had been transferred to Kovacic’s wife Tracey, a struck-off greyhound trainer.
Valentino Kocavic and his wife Tracey in front of their Eat Street Cafe in Gosford.
“She’s grown another leg since she came here,” Tracey Kovacic said in March last year of her greyhound, Agent Nevada, which had won nine races and $39,000 in prizemoney since she took over as trainer.
A week later, a post-race swab showed the presence of ipamorelin, a growth hormone. Tracey Kovacic was banned for 12 months and fined $3000.
Joe Lagan’s Porsche parked behind Kovacic’s house in Blue Gum Close, Matcham.Credit: Nick Moir
Not only has McInnes been stopped from seeing her father, who is in aged care, she is also concerned about what has happened to his belongings, furniture, computer and all his paperwork. “This was a successful man who is now left with nothing, no dignity and no voice,” she said.
On Tuesday, there is a tribunal hearing in which McInnes intends to contest Kovacic’s control over her father.
Also on Tuesday, Kovacic has a bankruptcy hearing in the Federal Court brought against him by La Trobe Financial, a non-bank lender. In the past, Kovacic has fended off bankruptcy actions taken against him by creditors including the tax office and former lawyers as well as financial institutions.
Land title records show that Kovacic’s home at Matcham, on the Central Coast has had a slew of caveats on the title, including one registered by Joe Lagan. That caveat, lodged in January 2015, says the property developer had an “equitable interest” in the property “by way of a loan agreement”.
Joe Lagan, 82, is now in aged care.
The caveat was withdrawn a year later. It is understood that Kovacic is representing Lagan in a court battle involving Lagan’s multimillion-dollar property development in Etna Street, Gosford.
Kovacic, who lists his occupation as “restaurant proprietor”, has had a colourful history. “It was a house of cards built on dodgy dollars,” the Herald reported in 2007 of the collapse of a “barter business” called Credex, run by one Valentino Kovacic, who was described as “a 39-year-old Central Coast entrepreneur with a string of failed or deregistered businesses behind him”.
“In two interviews with the Herald, Kovacic was reticent about his background before this, although ASIC records show he had worked in real estate in western Sydney going back to 1992, and that he had already been associated with four companies that had been deregistered,” the Herald reported at the time.
Trish McInnes with her father Joe Lagan on her wedding day.
On this occasion, Kovacic declined to speak to the Herald, instead corresponding via his lawyer Robert Shacklady, who works out of a lawyer friend’s office in Botany and who offered jovially that he had acted for “a range of rogues” including Kings Cross identities and bikies.
In 2017, Shacklady was criticised by Supreme Court Justice Helen Wilson who said of him: “It would appear that Mr Shacklady has no place of business, and operates in something of an on-call fashion.”
She said lenders used him “to witness documents for clients, and he does so for a cash payment, without opening a file, without taking file notes or keeping copies of documents, and without issuing an invoice for work done or proper receipt for fees paid. It is a most unusual way for a solicitor to operate.”
Shacklady, who has acted for both Lagan and Kovacic in business deals, told the Herald he was asked to draw up the guardianship documents by Lagan himself, who the lawyer said was of sound mind.
The solicitor said he had no reason to ask if Lagan had any relatives and he defended Kovacic’s appointment, saying that “Val” was doing the right thing by Lagan, “who’d lost the plot at some stage”.
Shacklady accused Lagan’s children, whom he admitted he’d never met, of wanting their dad’s money. “There’s no money,” he said. “It was taken by loan sharks from Melbourne.”
When asked if he thought it was appropriate for the ownership of Lagan’s Porsche to be transferred to Tracey Kovacic, Shacklady said he told Kovacic he wasn’t comfortable with that. “I said, ‘That’s not correct’.”
After speaking to Kovacic, Shacklady rang back to say “he had been thinking about the car” and recalled that Lagan was a very bad driver and, with all the repair work, the car was probably only worth $30,000.
He also forwarded an email from Kovacic written in June that indicated that Kovacic had complained to the court registry about being bullied and harassed by Lagan’s daughter and his friends and that he was prepared to relinquish his guardianship and management of Lagan’s affairs.
However, McInnes said he was yet to do so. “There needs to be an investigation into not only my dad’s finances and his welfare but how someone can get away with such behaviour towards an 82-year-old man,” she said.
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