Demetrious Charisiou: Jailed businessman’s effort to reduce sentence because of impact on family dismissed

A former high-flying businessman jailed after duping Korean investors into handing over almost $400 million has failed in his bid for a court to reduce his sentence because of his family’s distress

Demetrious Charisiou, 65, was sentenced to at least eight years behind bars in May last year after pleading guilty to two counts of using false documents and two counts of obtaining financial advantage by fraud.

Charisiou signed eight business deals totaling $394 million with two Korean financial institutions in early 2019 to purchase and supply NDIS approved flats through his company LBA Capital.

He provided a series of false documents to Korean institutions showing that a trust had been established to manage these investments.

Charisiou was only accused of benefiting from the first two deals, described as taking more than $38 million in “loans” to accounts his company controlled and spending $1.6 million to pay for two Victorian properties in his wife’s name. He was not accused of any wrongdoing.

None of the properties were ultimately purchased, and Korean institutions had recovered approximately $360 million at the time of sentencing.

The court was told that approximately $6 million was expected to be unrecoverable.

Charisiou, who appealed the 12-year prison sentence, argued that the long prison sentence was clearly excessive and that Judge John Champion made errors in assessing the impact on his family and did not properly apply the principle of integrity.

Through his lawyers, Charisiou argued that the Court of Appeal should overturn precedent, known as the Markovic decision, that family hardship should only be taken into account in exceptional cases.

Charisiou’s appeal was rejected in a decision handed down on Thursday morning; but the three-judge panel was divided on the question of difficulty.

Judges Phillip Priest, David Beach and Kristen Walker agreed that Charisiou failed to show that his sentence was outside the sentencing range open to Justice Champion and dismissed the appeal.

In written reasons, Judge Walker submitted a dissenting opinion to Judges Priest and Beach on whether the court should consider the impact of his incarceration on Charisiou’s family.

Justice Priest and Beach found that Justice Champion took into account the “very difficult” circumstances of Charisiou’s elderly mother, wife and two daughters “as Markovic permitted”.

On the Markovic question, which Charisiou’s lawyers argued was now inconsistent with the Commonwealth’s sentencing considerations, the two judges said the decision had been “upheld” by the NSW and South Australian courts.

“The decision in Markovic has been valid for more than 15 years… We are not convinced that there are any compelling reasons to leave Markovic,” they wrote.

“In our view, Markovic’s reasoning remains sound. If the position is to be changed for state offences, it would be for the legislature to change the position – as has been done in the Commonwealth area by the introduction of section 16A(2)(p) of the Commonwealth Offenses Act; alternatively, the Supreme Court should change the now well-settled position so far as Australian common law is concerned.”

In his dissent, Judge Walker wrote that it was his view that Champion for Justice should have considered the impact on Charisiou’s family, as opposed to the current state of the law.

It would sentence Charisiou to 10 years in prison with a seven-year non-parole period and state that family members would suffer limited distress from his incarceration.