16 August 2011

Victorian Bushfire Insurance Government Fraud

In the wake of the great Victorian bushfires dubbed by the mass media as the “Black Saturday” bushfires, there was much media attention given to the then Victorian police head Christine Nixon, going out to dinner whilst the state was burning resulting in the disgraced police head resigning.

What the mass media did not follow up on was the insurance fraud committed by both the government and insurance industry.

As a result of the mass influx of claims, the insurance companies did not want to dip into their ‘savings’ to pay out the claims so the CEO’s instructed not to pay out the policy holders under whatever pretext possible.

The most common pretext given was that the policy holder was under insured.

Even this was widespread throughout the insurance community, the insurance companies were lacking the funds to cover the claims, so they borrowed from the Victorian government.

In order to balance the figures, the Victorian government embarked on a campaign to recover the costs from the public.

One way that this is occurring, is that the government is fraudulently claiming monies from tenant leases.

Tenants for example, clubs may occupy a building, 4 days per month, and as a result pay a percentage of the month’s insurance policy. There could be up to a maximum of 11 tenants per premises.

What the government says then, is that the insurance has gone up for the premises (which it has not), and then requires each tenant to pay the full months insurance.

The government pays the insurance company the required amount, whilst pocketing the rest.

Since these clubs do not have the finances needed to take legal action, no lawsuit is filed against the government.

Consultation with a legal firm, which declined to be named publicly, has confirmed that this is a breach of current contracts, also adding over various offences including fraud.

corpau.

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