Potentially inappropriate asset transfers could deprive Christian Brothers abuse survivors of pay, government tells court | Australia news

Lawyers for the federal government say they are concerned about the “disturbing” potential that the Christian Brothers Catholic order may have improperly transferred property to another organization years before claiming it was broke and unable to meet the legal claims of abuse victims.

The New South Wales supreme court on Thursday ordered a moratorium on all abuse allegations against the Christian Brothers, a Catholic sect that played a major role in the church’s child sex abuse scandal.

The Christian Brothers requested the moratorium because they said the order would be overturned and wanted to create a separate plan to sell their remaining properties and divide the proceeds among various creditors, including survivors.

The Christian Brotherhood estimates it owes $774 million to survivors with current or future abuse allegations against it. It is stated that he has 36 properties worth $216 million under his control.

The moratorium will give survivors time to consider whether to support the Christian Brothers’ proposal.

But significant concerns have been raised over the past decade over the way the Christian Brothers have transferred property – land, school buildings and houses around former schools – to another organization outside its control, Edmund Rice Education Australia.

Property records obtained by the Guardian show these transfers were made for $1 each, even involving multimillion-dollar homes in Sydney. Named after the founder of the Christian Brothers, EREA was established as an independent organization in 2007 to assume control of former Christian Brothers schools.

At the hearing in the NSW supreme court, Sera Mirzabegian SC, representing the state, said the federal government was “interested in ensuring institutions take responsibility for abuse”. [and] He stated that they provided appropriate compensation.

Mirzabegian said the state had specific concerns about “historic asset transfers between the Christian Brothers and EREA” and whether they were “appropriate and appropriate.”

He said it would be “clearly troubling” if the transfers resulted in assets not being available for compensation for survivors.

The court heard that the plan proposed by the Christian Brothers would protect the rights of creditors, including survivors, to pursue assets transferred to EREA.

The Christian Brothers submitted 15 pages of evidence to the court regarding the nature of these property transfers.

But Mirzabegian said the evidence contained significant “inconsistencies”, including the value of the land transferred.

“What is very clear from this evidence is that it unfortunately raises more questions than it answers,” Mirzabegian said.

A Christian Brothers spokesman had previously told the Guardian that the property was transferred as part of a slow and progressive process to transfer the Christian Brothers’ school land and properties to EREA, which was delayed by what the spokesman described as “the complexity of transferring individual titles to multiple jurisdictions”.

Judge Scott Nixon halted the claims against the Christian Brothers by ordering a moratorium on Thursday.

The moratorium will give survivors time to consider a property sale plan and decide whether they want to support it. Nixon said that without a moratorium, the opportunity to consider the plan would be lost.

The Christian Brothers have previously said that if their proposed plan is not supported, the sect would be liquidated and the survivors would likely receive even less money.