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NAB BLACK OPS TEAM TAKES OUT LAWRENCE!
Tess Lawrence: forcibly removed from her home — which was still under legal contest.
On 19 July 2012, the National Australia Bank unleashed the full force of its Black Ops hit squad on IA contributing editor-at-large Tess Lawrence, forcing their way into her property and illegally evicting her from her home at 9 Herbert St, Northcote, Victoria.
It was the National Australia Talibank at its most fluid gangland thuggery, a squalid underbelly with which it has an intimate relationship, despite the ridiculous posture of innocence affected by its CEO Cameron Clyne.
Given that the NAB has no doubt learned the tricks of their treacherous trade from Muammar Gadaffi, one of their late but favourite celebrity terrorist clients and Interpol pin-up boy, the raid was executed by a small army of NAB’s flunkies and what Professor Evan Jones rightly calls “bottom feeders” — an armoury of receivers, bankruptcy trustee, film crew, security personnel, cleaners and packers, drivers, surveillance crew and others. Moreover, the entire posse either entirely refused to identify themselves or would provide only a first name. Or a grunt.
They were aided and abetted by duplicitious uniformed officers from the Sherriff’s Department, who – like their colleagues above – in this operation, considered themselves above the law and certainly without use for the legal or other protocols associated with due process and the requirements of State, Federal and Commonwealth law and jurisdictions in these matters — disallowing Lawrence a call to the city headquarters of the Sherriff, to whom she had written and from whom she is still awaiting a response.
The Sherriff and the Office has been unsuccessfully endeavouring to ameliorate its Stalinist approach to the State’s dirty work and only recently its knuckleheaded stupidity was exposed in Court and sanity restored when Justice Peter Vickery overturned the sale of a house in Braybrook for $1,000.
This didn’t chasten the Sherriff’s office in the slightest, who retaliated against having their authority publicly undermined with a blitz on collecting car fines and clamping wheels.
Lawrence’s home, ironically used as a safe house for victims of domestic violence, will be illegally auctioned tomorrow by stealth — bids to be made in a sealed envelope and delivered to Brace Estate Agents by 5pm.
Tess Lawrence’s home, advertised in the Fairfax press today.
All buyers are on notice that this and Lawrence’s other property and all possessions are also under legal challenge and is under a sine die adjournment in the Court of Appeal, Victoria.
The sine die adjournment, oddly, is not noted online. And yet it was granted in court and is cited in the court transcript.
Lawrence alleges that the NAB is unlawfully and unethically withholding this evidence from potential buyers.
The now homeless Lawrence asserts that this property, like her portfolio and possessions, are now deemed to be stolen goods and that anyone buying or selling these are trading in stolen goods, and that any such traffic is the responsibility of the NAB and its agents and representatives.
In the coming days, Independent Australia will reveal an explosive series of articles based on Lawrence’s long-time investigations into the National Australia Bank and its corrupt, fraudulent and unconscionable conduct.
We will provide evidence and join the dots in a story so contaminated with criminal activity and cover up, that you will feel unclean even reading it.
The National Australia Bank, more than any of the Gang of Four, according to Lawrence, wields the most power in the Courts.
We will speak truth to power.
That fistula of power includes the NAB, the court system, the justice system, the regulators, judges, police, the Media, the Sherriff, the bankrupty trustees, the receivers, the estate agents, the lawyers, and the bottom feeders — and here Lawrence also ranks the men in suits at the top, since they ultimately preside over this rancid pile of collusion.
Lawrence will send Victoria Police and the Federal Police a brief of evidence on the NAB’s fraud and corruption – and the other matters raised in the series, including money laundering by gangland figures, terrorists, and despotic regimes – and drug taking in Australian sport.
ONE THEY NAB-BED EARLIER:
Take the opportunity to subscribe to Independent Australia, so you don’t miss the compelling ‘The National Australia Talibank’ series — or any other IA articles.
Lawrence is only too aware that her story, sadly, is merely commonplace now in Australia and acknowledges that behind the statistics are human beings who will never get the chance to have their stories of brutality by the banks heard inside or outside Court. This series is dedicated to them.
8 Comments
The NAB is probably the most corrupt major corporation in Australia. Its public relations and advertising budget is possibly the largest in Australia as well, but the two dimensions are causally related.
Admittedly, banking provides a ready opportunity for corruption not available to companies in other sectors. The CBA is belatedly putting in a splendiferous surge (via the destruction of hordes of BankWest customers) to overtake the NAB’s well-earned reputation, and what a masterstroke it is. But the NAB, like the tortoise to the hare, just keeps keeping along in that bread and butter destruction of SMEs/farmers, off the media radar, for which it is a past master. I was privy to yet another exhibit several weeks ago, a classic ghastly rendition of pillage, reducing a self-made multi-millionaire to someone who couldn’t afford to make a telephone call and sleeping on a friend’s couch. A strategic tour de force, but all part of the copy book of the NAB’s front line warriors.
The NAB even exports its skills development into the sector more broadly. I have been informed of ex NAB managers who have moved into other banks (Bendigo Bank, Westpac, BankWest) and plied the corrupt practices they learnt at the NAB in their new institutions, thus enhancing the corruption quotient in the entire sector.
The NAB’s use of other parties to do the really low end shit work is endemic in the industry, but the NAB is again the past master – Tess’ experience as Exhibit A. Add the sadism for good measure.
Very interesting the role of the taxpayer-funded Sheriff’s office. Most of the work of that edifice appears to be to throw people out of their homes for the benefit of the bank lender.
It must be a full-time occupation for the sheriff constituency, and it doesn’t rate a mention in the MSM. Where is Kate McClymont when we need her?
As for the NAB’s agenda, who is directing the performance?
CEO Clyne knows about it and evidently condones it, but possibly he is unaware of the extent of the criminality over which he presides. That photogenic brow must remain untroubled, so the squalid details are outsourced to others. More, he inherited the mentality and it will survive his departure. Why try to swim against a raging tide?
The person at the top of the Legal Department is a lynch pin, and directly culpable. But who is it? A well-kept secret since David Krasnostein departed as Chief General Counsel in 2007.
Then there is the Chairman of the Board, Michael Chaney.
On the CEO Forum Group he proclaimed: “Both roles [CEO and Board Chairman] also demand leadership qualities and behaviours, such as establishing a vision, building and motivating a team, and setting the tone of the organization in areas such as integrity and ethics.” Integrity and ethics indeed. Nothing, nothing whatsoever has come from the Board to clamp down on the NAB’s addiction to corrupt practices.
Then there’s the fairy floss that perfumes the foul odour – Tim Costello, Steve Bracks, latterly Ken Henry – sometime floosies that bedeck the strong arm of the NAB mafia. Selling their good name for a mess of pottage.
It’s a bravura performance all round. Well not quite. The pervasive incompetence persists (there must be some intelligence in the markets, as they continue to discount the NAB’s share price – to the chagrin of all those pro-bank judges who hold NAB shares in their comfortable portfolio).
And the NAB’s lunge into toxic derivatives (APRA asleep on the job yet again) now faces a serious class action, with adverse implications for both its bottom line and its reputation.
This last couldn’t happen to a more deserving company.
These banks are given such privileges by our society in terms of their right to operate and government guarantees for depositors that we should expect the highest standards of social responsibility from them. If these allegations are true, then their licence should be suspended. In fact, all corporations should face this threat. We may not be able to hold corporations accountable to their indirect shareholders (many of whom have little say over where their super fund contributions are invested) but by threatening to withdraw their licence to operate we can hold them accountable to the society they are supposed to serve and contribute to.
Sadly I think that this type of situation is only going to become more common as economic hardship bites.
Dear DR EVAN JONES, so many of us depend on your incisive forensic research and wholistic understanding of the rotting cultural core of the NATIONAL AUSTRALIA TALIBANK in particular – and other banks – as your writings for INDEPENDENT AUSTRALIA in particular, so vigorously attest.
To have the presence of your academic firewall in this community space is critical to the dangerous and tortuous path of standing up to these bullies.
It is awful that the NAB has the word ‘ Australia ‘ in its name because many people overseas think it is a Government-owned bank.
Mind you, look at the lack of transparency and public accountability of the State and Federal Governments.
And look at the extraordinary work into subsiduaries of the RESERVE BANK OF AUSTRALIA by RICHARD BAKER and NICK MCKENZIE of THE AGE – and the corruption, lies and deception and criminal activity that these two journalist sleuths have expunged!
The NAB acts with impunity because it CAN.
Dear MATTHEW MITCHELL, thank you for your wise comment.
If the NATIONAL AUSTRALIA BANK was a car, it would be deemed unroadworthy.
It is unworthy of its Licence.
‘Academic firewall’? There is an academic firewall, and it has been erected to prevent the real world of banking intruding into the serene world of academe.
I attempted to get an article on some aspects of corrupt bank practices published in an academic journal, but it was rejected because one reviewer (in Commercial Law) opined that my claims, although backed with copious evidence, could not possibly have occurred because the law and regulations pertaining to bank malpractice in Australia are very strong and operative.
Ignorance is bliss, and the next generation of law students is tutored by such people.
Texts in banking law, massive in size, pay miniscule attention to banking fraud and unconscionability.
There is a minor academic legal literature in unconscionability, tortuous, which sees the practice as marginal, rather than systemic, and relevant only to that ‘disability’ area where the victim (typically the hapless guarantor) doesn’t speak English or is the wife who has been kept in the dark about the husband’s ill-fated business ventures.
The bias of legal training is nicely summed up in an article by one Wickrema Weerasooria, “Banks owe no fiduciary or ‘special duty’ to customers: a reaffirmation”, Australian Banking & Finance Law Bulletin, 15/9, April 2000. Weerasoria was Assoc Pro and Professor of Banking Law at Monash University 1990-2002, where he directed a Banking Law Centre funded by (you guesssed it) the NAB. Weerasoria’s claim might have been reflective of the series of precedents established in Australian courts (a history of judicial complicity with bank malpractice), but the claim is a statement on the politics of banking and the politics of the law in banking rather than the nature of banking itself.
The asymmetry of power between lender and borrower (esp SMEs/farmers) formally implies a university fiduciary duty (as embodied in the concept of ‘professionalism’). But banking practice takes advantage of the illusion and expectations of customers, and perennially leverages that asymmetry of power into corrupt and criminal practices for maximum effect.
While the legal profession and the judiciary goes out to lunch on its contribution to that end.
The Tess Lawrence trajectory is Exhibit A for this scenario.
GEORGE MANSFORD sent me this poem ‘offline’ and has given me permission to post it here. Thanks George.
“HANG IN THERE, MATE”
“Hang in there, mate” is a term Aussies often use
It’s like a hug or comforting pat when there’s bad news
When a mate is crook as a dog and no time to rest
Or someone lagging behind and can’t keep up with the rest
It’s often used when someone could be about to die
The Sheila who’s had bad luck and starting to cry
A neighbour who lost his job and stone bloody broke
Or some luckless sod threatening to cut a wrist and croak
Your best mate banned from the pub by his wife’s vote
Fishing far from shore when there’s a leak in the boat
Can’t find that lotto ticket when you know you’ve won
Someone forgot a wedding anniversary and about to be done
As did the Anzacs at the landing when things got tough
Our tough pioneers of the outback said it often enough
Bushfires, cyclones, droughts, and floods to name but a few
“Hang in there mate” is the magic tonic from for such as you
George Mansford©March 2010
* I will, Mate. And this is for everyone else hanging in there too.
Looking forward to reading this series. My mother had her own problems with Sheriff’s Officers but being a Depression survivor she saw them off with a broom after which family members stepped in to sort out the mess. They can be like hired thugs at times.
Dear OSCAR JONES, thank you for your comment. Your Mum sounds wonderfully feisty and I wish she were at my side, preferably leading the charge.
It will be wonderful to know you are reading the series and I look forward to your opinion in the comments section.
Please encourage your Cobbers to subscribe to us – and not just for this series, but all the other articles as well.
It is important that all this subterfuge and collusion is placed in the public domain, where it rightly belongs. And that we support one another – that we challenge lies, even if they are sworn in Court and even if Judges are prepared to condone such disgraceful conduct.
We should not be frightened ( though I am ) and we should resist all attempts to silence us.