Gold Coast property company Sunland has filed a claim against a Melbourne developer and his old school friend from Geelong Grammar for the alleged common law tort of deceit.
The property group filed the claim with the Federal Court of Australia, at the Queensland registry yesterday.
The documents detail a case involving Matt Joyce and Marcus Lee, who were employed in 2007 on the Dubai Waterfront project, and Melbourne-based property developer Angus Reed, who went to school with Joyce.
Sunland claims that Joyce and Reed knew each other and failed to give any indication of this relationship to the developer’s representative in Dubai when he was negotiating to buy land in the Dubai Waterfront.
The documents claim that Joyce had told Sunland that Reed had purchased a valuable piece of waterfront land. Sunland later agreed to pay Reed over $14 million for the right to buy the land, even though Reed had never actually owned it or had rights to buy it.
Sunland also alleges "Joyce and Reed both knew that their representations were false, or were reckless as to their truth or falsity".
Reed has fled Dubai and is currently in Melbourne, while Joyce and Lee, who is from Sydney, have both been kept in detention in Dubai for the past year.
Sunland has been in business for 25 years, with 13 years as a publicly listed company, holding more than 10,000 products across residential housing, urban development and residential multi-storey in Australia and overseas.
