The war in Ukraine crashes head-on into NSW’s ICAC … The Tamil on fire … Analogies stretched … Weird newspaper column … Important bits missing … The Law of Rulers goes troppo 

Even for The Tamil it was a peculiar outpouring. He started off by saying that Ukraine was in a struggle with Russia to defend the rule of law. This is in keeping with Merritt’s role as vice-president of the Law of Rulers Institute – an outfit designed to conscript selected bits of the rule of law into any cause that requires right-wingers to howl at the moon.

From Ukraine, he swung over to a decision of the European Court of Justice upholding the right of the European Union to freeze funds to Poland and Hungary because of political attacks on the independence of the judiciary in those countries. 

From there, with one giant leap, it was onto The Tamil’s pet subject, ICAC in NSW and how the anti-corruption watchdog had been mean to business identity Charif Kazal. 

Apparently, Kazal is going to the United Nations to get his human rights restored after being subjected to “appalling treatment” by the anti-corruption watchdog. 

London based vowel stretcher Lord Geoffrey Robertson has been recruited to the cause where he is hoping that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights may come to Kazal’s rescue, otherwhere we’re in the territory of “the Soviet show trials of the 1930s”. 

The then attorney general Christian Porter also stepped in and reversed his department’s submission to the UN committee. The department had proposed that Kazal’s complaint be thrown out. 

Merritt is such a stickler for the rule of law that he would like to see people convicted on the basis of their involuntary confessions.  

Charif Kazal is in the cafe and restaurant business in Sydney’s Rocks. In 2011 ICAC found that he had acted corruptly in cultivating Andrew Kelly, a senior public servant at the Sydney Foreshore Authority, the outfit in charge of the Kazal family tenancies. 

It was found that Kazal had acted corruptly in seeking to influence Kelly in the exercise of his official functions. The businessman held out the prospect of overseas employment for Kelly while both of them lied about a cash payment of $11,000 to the public servant to cover travel expenses on a trip they took jointly to Abu Dhabi. 

There was also a finding of corruption made against Kelly. 

A prosecution against Kazal didn’t proceed because the evidence of witnesses heard by ICAC could not be used in court. 

In 2013 the Supreme Court dismissed a subsequent challenge by Kazal. Two years later Kazal complained to ICAC’s acting inspector, John Nicholson SC about ICAC’s determination. 

This resulted in a report that, according to retired judge Anthony Whealy, has “fuelled Kazal’s subsequent vendetta (and that of the Murdoch press) against ICAC”. 

In one of the Centre for Public Integrity’s case studies, Whealy says that Nicholson was way off-beam, that he had no jurisdiction to examine the facts as found by ICAC, yet proceeded to do so. 

Further, the acting inspector displayed a “complete misunderstanding of the ICAC legislation, its purposes and methods. In particular, the criticisms ignore the fact that ICAC investigations are entirely separate from criminal proceedings”. 

The government has not adopted any of Nicholson’s recommendations, and they have not been taken up by the subsequent inspector Bruce McClintock SC. 

In his eagerness to get his scribble about Ukraine/Poland/Kazal to press, The Tamil clean forgot to mention Justice Steven Rares’ Federal Court decision in Thunder Studios Inc (California) v Kazal (No. 12), handed down the previous week. 

The judge ordered Charif Kazal to pay damages of $400,00 plus interest of $125,000 to Rodric David and his company Thunder Studios. The judge also ordered damages of $600,000 payable to David and Thunder by Charif’s brother Adam plus interest of $225,000. Adam Kazal earlier had been sentenced to 15 months porridge for contempt.

There was a further $50,000 awarded to Thunder Studios payable by Charif, with interest of $15,000. Adam is required to pay Thunder another $75,000 and $22,500 in interest. 

A bill of over $1.5 million, plus costs. 

The case concerned a long-winded and antagonistic dispute over a joint venture business in the UAE and subsequent attacks on Rodric David by the Kazal brothers. 

It extended to a picket outside Davids’ Los Angeles home, with placards, banners and a van festooned with allegations of corporate theft. 

Other vans with the same messages were driven around Sydney. 

Justice Rares found that the brothers’ conduct resembled a “concerted, continuous, campaign by both of them to vilify and denigrate Mr David and Thunder. The campaign was conducted as a vendetta”. 

The defamatory attack was calculated to injure Mr David with “deliberately false assertions … that Mr David was a criminal, a thief and had been ‘convicted’.”

The conduct of the respondents was “improper, unjustifiable and lacking in good faith … they have taken extraordinary measures to antagonise Mr David, intensify the volume of publications of the matters complained of and associated matters to create as much damage to Mr David’s reputation as possible.” 

Rares also ordered an injunction to stop the Kazals’ “irrational and vendetta-like behaviour”. 

Not a mention of this distressing finding against Merritt’s pin-up boy in the columnist’s rule of law tirade.