Innovation at the NAB and Grab

The National Australia Bank, always on the cutting edge of innovation, appears to have broken new ground in dealing with unwanted clients.

A&A has covered the NAB before (12 November 2005 deals with the seminal case of a Queensland farming couple, the Somersets against whom local staff committed fraud and against whom the NAB head office destroyed through the court system. That piece also refers to pieces on other NAB victims; 1 December 2005 deals with the more recent case of Sante Troiani, whose successful Bundaberg company Wide Bay Bricks was destroyed by the NAB over an extended period in the 1990s; the Troiani case is also dealt with on 14 July 2005).

Below fragments relating to a current case involving the NAB. A strange setup indeed. Reproduced here in the interests of furthering education on that hall of mirrors that is the banking sector.

The NAB has a client in Tasmania, and claims a debt of approximately $190,000.

The NAB foreclosed on a property of the client, and sold it for $50,000, claiming a residual debt of $140,000. The client claims that the NAB has sold the property for a fire sale price (not a wild claim given evidence of persistent practice in this vein).

The NAB assigned its interest in the debt to a company called Accounts Control Management Services Pty Ltd. Let’s call this assignee ACMS.

ACMS then issues proceedings in the Magistrates’ Court in Melbourne against the NAB’s Tasmanian client. The statement of claim indicates that the Plaintiff is the NAB’s assignee ACMS.

It so happens that the limits of the Magistrates’ Court’s jurisdiction is $100,000, so the Plaintiff ACMS signs away the residual of some $40,000.

At a pre-hearing in September, the Plaintiff adjourned the matter to a future date. The Plaintiff is resisting discovery of documents in favour of the client Defendant (discovery of bank documents has always been a problem in litigation involving banks).

What of the assignee? Accounts Control Management Services appears to be a one-person company, operating out of an upstairs office in Elizabeth Street Sydney. The company Director/Secretary is one Humberto Vieira, of Burraneer in the southern suburbs of Sydney. There have been many previous addresses, and there have been other Directors, now off the books.

The case is shot through with curiosities.

· Why would the NAB assign the debt? The NAB typically runs its own foreclosure cases through tightly controlled receivers
· Why would the NAB assign the debt to a non-Tasmanian company?
· Why would the NAB assign the debt to a post office box NSW operation?
· Why would ACMS sue in Melbourne rather than in Tasmania where the debt was incurred?
· Why did ACMS sue in the Magistrates’ Court, in the process being forced to forego some of the claimed debt?
· If ACMS was prepared to forego $40,000 in a $140,000 debt, was the price paid to NAB for the assignation heavily discounted?
· Where is the return to the NAB in selling a property at a knock down price and (in all probability) assigning the sizeable remainder of the claimed debt at discount?

Don’t expect any answers from the financial media. The media devotes much column inches to ‘competition’ in establishing customers, with minute reporting of market shares. It devotes no attention to what happens to customers at the other end.

- Alert and Alarmed November 01, 2006

History of Banking Fraud: The Coming Battle By  M. W. WALBERT 

 The Coming Battle documents from Congressional records, newspaper reports and writings by the founding fathers and others a chronology of events long forgotten that shaped our fledgling nation from 1776 to 1899. Read about the manipulation of our money and its supply, the intentional creation of recessions, depressions and panics, manipulation of the stock markets, and the demonetization of silver.

Secrets of the Federal Reserve by Eustace Mullins

Eustace Mullins' carefully researched and documented treatise picks up from Walbert's expose' and brings it to the mid 1980's