Real estate agents face disciplinary hearing

Real estate agents whose practicing certificates were suspended after an alleged mortgage fraud was uncovered last year are to appear before an industry authority on Monday.

The Real Estate Agents Licensing Board, the state authority with the power to strike off agents, convenes in Parnell to hear arguments for and against the agents.

The agents, who worked for Barfoot and Thompson, were last year named as Phillip John Niall, Faizel Jasset and the third has since been granted name suppression.

A former Barfoot agent is also to go to the board on Monday. He has also been given name suppression.

In October, the board suspended five people, including three agents.

Barfoots said it had sacked four salespeople for alleged misconduct.

The case against Niall and two other agents is expected to take a week to hear, which board registrar Diane Rawlinson said was unusual because hearings usually took a maximum of three days.

She did not know if any of the agents would appear at the hearings. Jassat is understood to be overseas.

INDUSTRY RULES

* Set down by the Real Estate Agents Act 1976.

* Agents' cases will go before the licensing board.

* Monday's hearing will be conducted under section 99, which deals with disciplinary issues.

* Board has power to cancel an agents' certificates.


The Real Estate Institute is taking the case under disciplinary provisions of the Real Estate Agents Act 1976 and is to be represented by Steven Haszard, principal of Crown solicitors Meredith Connell.

The three agents had their licence certificates suspended after being found to have inflated house sales prices.

Barfoot director Peter Thompson said last year his firm was concerned about 20 transactions made between November and May 2006.

They were discovered by accident,

and no private vendor was affected, he said.

Between 20 and 25 people were involved in the scam, including developers and valuers, he said.

Several banks had also been involved and it was up to them to press criminal charges.

The institute said the board has jurisdiction over about 1600 real estate offices employing 3500 licensees and branch managers and supporting 16,000 sales people, although the number of salespeople has dropped this year.

The system might change if the Government introduces new real estate agents law, due to get its second reading before the House soon.

That would change the way agents are disciplined, impose stiffer penalties and bring more consumer protection to the system.

The Serious Fraud Office has prosecuted insiders involved in other mortgage scams and its director, Grant Liddell, said this type of fraud was worth "tens of millions of dollars".

A $7 million home-loan scam in South Auckland involved insiders.

Real estate agent Ranjeet Prasad pleaded guilty to 23 fraud charges and former Westpac mortgage manager Amar Singh has admitted two charges.

Both were sentenced in July. The SFO said Singh, who received an 18-month sentence, was due to appear this month for a bail application pending an appeal against sentence.

Both pleaded guilty to charges involving dishonesty in respect of the same offending, the SFO said.

Prasad was sentenced to eight months of home detention and 400 hours of community work, and was ordered to pay $80,000 in reparation to victims.