Both AFSA and the Australian Federal Police have issued ‘media releases’ about the sentencing of a lawyer to jail for perverting the course of justice and obtaining a financial advantage by deception, for which an overall sentence of 3 years’ imprisonment was imposed with a minimum of 1 year. DPP (Cth) v Voitin [2025] VCC 1395 (22 September 2025)
The crimes involved some serious fabrication, using a company controlled by Voitin to create fictitious personal debts for clients with the objective of obtaining a more favourable outcome from an insolvency, as well as a financial benefit to his law firm. He even went to the length of initiating court proceedings as substantiation of the fictitious debts.
A significant fact however, mentioned by neither the marketing people at AFSA nor the AFP, is that the events happened over 13 years ago, mainly in 2011. Why the matter has taken this long is not fully explained.
The Judge did refer to the “considerable delay” between the 2011 offending, his co-offenders being dealt with in 2016, his being charged in 2020, his pleas of guilty in November 2024, and the 2025 sentencing.
The Court’s comment that it was “not uncommon in the case of sophisticated white collar offending for there to be a period required in which investigation and related matters are required to occur” does not quite explain the delay.
The lawyer is a 68 year old man in ill health with a wife and family and with no previous convictions. The Court alluded to his colourful history, none of which is relevant. The Court accepted that he was unlikely to reoffend, hence specific deterrence was not relevant.
But as to general deterrence, the Judge said that
“your offending was sophisticated, protracted, and involved the misuse by you of your legal knowledge. Both deterrence and denunciation must be appropriately emphasised in my sentencing of you. Others in the legal profession need to understand that such behaviour will not be tolerated”.
This case hardly fits the general deterrence criteria of there being a level of certainty of being caught, and promptly. A jail sentence in that context is questionable. Rather, the case suggests that an offence committed 13 years ago might at some stage lead to conviction and jailing.
This is hardly an outcome to promote. But the difficulty, being polite, is that neither of the AFP nor the AFSA media releases mentioned or explained the long period of time involved. Rather, each agency touted this matter as a success in terms of their regulatory performance.
AFSA said that
“general deterrence is an important factor to communicate to other members of the legal profession that this conduct is unacceptable and shall be punished”.
The AFP intoned that
“anyone involving themselves in these types of practices is engaging in criminal behaviour and you will be caught”,
maybe, eventually.
