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The gold and diamond merchant Alejandro Mendieta has a massive win in the supreme court of appeals in Victoria. ADTC, a diamond wholesale business in Collins St, started the court battle by accusing Mr. Mendieta’s company of holding diamonds given as collateralized loans to the currently bankrupt jeweler Ron Bensimon.
Ron Bensimon was a reputed jeweler with his flagship store in the Crown Casino mega-complex. This is the place where he made exclusive diamond rings for celebrities and high rollers. However, all came to an end when Mr. Bensimon’s gambling troubles had reached almost 12,000,000 dollars in losses. We came to know his biggest bet losses from acquired bankruptcy documents came from horse gambling, online casinos, and Crown Casino of Melbourne.
Mr. Bensimon, forced to announce insolvency, had by then ripped off around a sum of 2,000,000 dollars from his parents. The rest of the total $12,000,000 he got from the other companies where he was running a profitable scam of acquisition of diamonds on consignment.
The diamond industry’s working method allowed Mr. Bensimon to possess a large number of diamonds on consignment from different diamond wholesalers. One of the wholesalers was ADTC, located at 227 Collins St in Melbourne. From court documents, it is clear ADTC lost somewhere around $1.5 to $2,000,000 on the stock given to present Mr. Bensimon on conditions but never paid.
In the lawsuit, 5 mammoth diamonds were in queries with a wholesale value of over $250,000 and retail of over 500,000 Australian Dollars. According to ADTC, Mr. Mendieta’s company Sell Your Gold Pvt. Ltd was still holding the 5 diamonds. The accusations stirred up from an affidavit Mr. Bensimon made as part of his bankruptcy statements. He names multiple commerce like Mr. Mendieta’s who lent money on goods at an interest rate of up to 5% a month. Mr. Bensimon would then use the money to support his gambling adhesion.
ADTC claimed that those diamonds were still their property and, therefore, must be returned. Wherever Mr. Mendieta demanded, those diamonds in question had already returned to Mr. Bensimon. He went to produce a clear record of past SMS to the court showing the return of the diamonds to Bensimon.
Here one would think no liability is there as the deal had been completed. However, ADTC’s proficient legal team used a very old law. It states that an individual/entity is liable even if the deal has concluded, which had happened in this case. Though this outmoded law made no sense, it was up to the judge who makes a decision.
Some months passed, the Victorian County Court judge ruled in favor of ADTC. However, this was shortly followed by an appeal in the Supreme Court by Mendieta’s legal team.
The legal rivalry came to an end with The Supreme Court of appeals reversing the county court’s decision and a victory to Mendieta. As per the latest court’s decision, ADTC was obliged to pay all legal fees and related expenses by Mr. Mendieta’s company.
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