Today was a great opening. It looks to me that Collinson has in one fell swoop potentially eliminated the non-disclosure of 17 April.
Collinson first covered the Visa issue and Seyfort's advice. The case against Karantzis has to “go the extra leg” to show that Karantzis should have known that disclosure should have been made – 642A of the Act. Going to the VISA issue, Collinson said that Seyfort’s evidence kills off case at least 17 Apr - 12 May and the reason for that is that in respect to that period Mr Seyfort deposes that he advised Hart and Karantzis that disclosure should not be made. That is important because the case against JK as alleged by ASIC is a breach of section 180 of the Corporations act which states if a director acts in good faith due to legal advice there cannot be a contravention of the Corporations Act.
It appears that Seyfort has also stated, which we will hear from later, that he was pivotal in the writing of the disclosure letter that did go out at the end of May 2020.
There was lots of agreement by the judge during this part of the opening.
