PHOTO: ROSA WOODS/STUFF In a recent decision Justice Helen Cull, at the High Court in Wellington, said she upheld most of Manthi Srilal Perera’s claims and awarded him $604,500. (File photo)
It started out as an agreement over a family dinner but it soured badly for an absentee landlord who has just been awarded more than $600,000.
Manthi Srilal Perera asked his sister and brother in law, over a family dinner, to look after a two-flat rental property in Orangi Kaupapa Rd, in the Wellington suburb of Northland, while Perera went to live and work in Melbourne in 1991.
For the next 24 years Avninderpal Singh, whose wife Chamali Supriya Singh was Perera’s sister, mingled his, his business, and his brother in law’s money, keeping accounts “in his head”, a judge was told.
From 1991 to 2015, Perera left them in charge of his rental property, his bank account, and paying his life insurance policy premiums. They already had their own rental property and he thought they were up to the job.
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