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

A formerly high-flying businessman, jailed after conning Korean investors into handing over almost $400m, has failed in his bid to have a court slash his sentence because of his family’s hardship Demetrious Charisiou, 65, was sentenced to at least eight years behind bars in May last year after pleading guilty to two counts of using a false document and two counts of obtaining a financial advantage by deception. Through his company LBA Capital, Charisiou entered into eight business deals with two Korean financial institutions totalling $394m in early 2019 to purchase and supply NDIS approved apartments. He supplied a series of fake documents to the Korean institutions purporting to show a trust had been established to manage these investments. Charisiou was only charged with benefiting from the first two deals, characterised as receiving more than $38m in “credit” to accounts his company controlled, spending $1.6m to pay off two Victorian properties in his wife’s name. She has not been accused of any wrongdoing. None of the properties were ultimately purchased and the Korean institutions had recovered about $360m at the time of sentencing. About $6m was expected to be unrecoverable, the court was told. Appealing his 12-year sentence, Charisiou argued the lengthy prison sentence was manifestly excessive and that Justice John Champion had made mistakes in considering the impact on his family and failed to properly apply the principle of totality. Through his lawyers, Charisiou argued the Court of Appeal should overturn a legal precedent that family hardship should only be considered in exceptional circumstances, known as the Markovic decision. Charisiou’s appeal was rejected in a decision handed down on Thursday morning; however, the panel of three judges were split on the hardship question. Justices Phillip Priest, David Beach and Kristen Walker each agreed Charisiou had failed to show his sentence was beyond the sentencing range open to Justice Champion and dismissed the appeal. In written reasons, Justice Walker provided a dissenting opinion to Justices Priest and Beach on whether the court should have considered the impact of his jailing on Charisiou’s family. Justices Priest and Beach found Justice Champion had taken into account the “very difficult” circumstances of Charisiou’s elderly mother, his wife and his two daughters “in the way permitted by Markovic”. On the Markovic question, which Charisiou’s lawyers had argued was now inconsistent with Commonwealth sentencing considerations, the two judges said the decision had been “endorsed” by NSW and South Australian courts. “The decision in Markovic has stood for more than 15 years ... we are not persuaded that there is any compelling reason to depart from Markovic,” they wrote. “In our view, the reasoning in Markovic remains sound. If the position is to be altered for state offences, it would be for the legislature to alter the position – as has been done in the Commonwealth sphere by the enactment of s 16A(2)(p) of the Commonwealth Crimes Act; alternatively, it would be for the High Court to change what is currently a well-settled position so far as the Australian common law is concerned.” In her dissenting position, Justice Walker wrote that it was her view that Justice Champion should have considered the impact on Charisiou’s family in contrast to the current state of the law. She would have resentenced Charisiou to 10 years’ jail with a non-parole period of seven years, noting his family members will experience some limited hardship by reason of his incarceration.