Judgment Details

Colliers CRE must wait to hear whether it has won its case against former employee Shelley Pandya over allegedly fraudulent invoicing.

This afternoon, HH Judge Richard Seymour QC reserved judgment in the agent’s claim against the former purchase ledger supervisor, who is alleged to have stolen more than £160,000 using “false invoices”.

Colliers accused Pandya of “unlawfully diverting moneys”, between November 2005 and May 2007, to another firm, Secure Property Services, and to three individuals, London Underground worker Peter Modeste, WA Harvey and Eric Jonas, with whom Colliers had “no known” relationship.

Both Pandya and Modeste, who was separately represented at the trial, denied liability and claimed that the person responsible for the fraud was Jonas.

Pandya’s counsel, Royln Seeboruth, told the court that she had been “honest and truthful” in her evidence but that she had been the “victim of circumstances who, maybe by pure foolishness, omission or neglect had been a puppet on the string of Mr Jonas”.

He said that there was no evidence of a conspiracy and that the evidence “establishes squarely that Mr Jonas was the culprit”.

In his closing reply, Colliers’ barrister, Adam Solomon, said that the evidence given by Pandya and Modeste had been “the worst I have ever heard in a civil jurisdiction, and entirely incredible”.

He said that Colliers had produced “irrefutable” evidence showing that Pandya had lied to the court and “ample evidence that she had acted in concert with Jonas and Secure Property Services”.

Solomon said that Modeste had shown a “bizarre approach to evidence” and that the judge should not accept his evidence, which had been “critically undermined” by inconsistencies.

Neither Jonas nor Harvey, who were also sued by Colliers, were present or represented at the hearing.

Adam Solomon was instructed by David Rose of Michael Conn Goldsobel