“I was a senior executive in a top 200 company in Australia, called the Australian Wheat Board (AWB) that worked for the company for 22 years. (AWB) got involved in a Royal Commission of Food. Through that Royal Commission there were findings made against me, it was a shattering experience, a lot of pressure on me, a lot of pressure on my family, a lot of unknowns. It was a very stressful period in my life. For a period of time where the last thought before you go to sleep and the first thought when you woke up in the morning, was that situation that you’re involved in, so it never left my mind.”
‘“After the Royal Commission, the Australian Securities & Investment Commission commenced proceedings against Peter… alleging he had breached his duties under the Corporations Act.
Andrew Tragardh was appointed as Peter’s barrister.”
“One of the things I was impressed very early in the piece with Andrew is he took the time to listen to what I had to say, but also took the time to really understand what was going on. I had a lot of advice from people just to settle, move on with my life but that’s not in my character.”
“When I first met Andrew, he went through all of my options but he never actually tried to strongly encourage me down that path, he was very much willing and if I wanted to fight, then he would fight the fight with me. That was one of the things that really attracted me to Andrew was that once we decided I was going down that path, we didn’t waver at all at any point.”
“Andrew came into it with a fresh pair of eyes and like a jigsaw puzzle, he put the pieces together. I think Andrew had a better understanding of what really went on than anybody else within the company I work for, or the press, or the legal world, or even most of the other companies overseas that got caught up in it. He did a terrific job getting down to working out what was real and what was just fabrications. He was very passionate about it. When you know, we had some tough times, Andrew was very easy to communicate with. There were a few obstacles that were thrown in my path. Others would say “Oh this is a deal breaker now, you’re in some serious trouble”. Andrew would sit down, very clear minded, very strategic and would say “okay well let’s really work out what happened here”. Andrew was confident all the way through, he was there all the way through. Afterwards it was just a relief just to put it all over, had a bit of a cry, it was just a fantastic feeling.”
“Peter was cleared of all charges, both on trial and on Appeal.”