Bogus Cancer Therapist Bows To Family Calls And Fronts Up To Charges

The Age

Friday December 21, 2007

Leonie Wood

SIX days after his son, Micheal, was arrested and remanded on a criminal charge of failing to produce company documents to regulators, the bogus cancer therapist Paul John Rana finally turned himself in to the sheriff at the Federal Court this week.

It was a surprise move, coming almost one month after Rana had ambled from the same court - an arrest warrant trailing in his wake - as he claimed he was not the person he now admits he is, but "Paul of the family Rana".

But Rana's surrender was also a curious act of familial piety. When he arrived at the court at lunchtime on Wednesday, in response to a phone call from his son's barrister, he was arrested and taken down to the holding cells.

Upstairs, Justice Tony North had just finished making it abundantly clear to 24-year-old Micheal Rana that if he wanted a speedy trial of his own criminal charges and the prospect of release from prison conditions, a firm sighting of his father or co-operation of some sort might help.

One call did the trick.

Both father and son will now appear at a highly unusual scheduling of the Federal Court tomorrow, when they will face trial on criminal charges initiated by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

The charges attract a prison sentence of up to 12 months. Rowena Orr, QC, for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, told the court on Wednesday that the ACCC wanted jail terms for both men if they were found guilty.

But Rana's surrender did not aid his son's request for bail. Justice North said he was extremely reluctant to release him considering the Rana family's antics in recent months.

Not only did father and son refuse to identify themselves to the court last time they appeared, but in response to the criminal charges laid by the ACCC, they had filed documents at the court in recent months ostensibly demanding payment of $294 million.

The documents were couched in language that Justice North described as garbage, mumbo-jumbo, bizarre and finally "quite sinister, because they reflect the view that the (Ranas) consider themselves literally a law unto themselves . . . that they function in a society outside the legal system".

Batches of the same documents were also addressed to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, executives and staff of the ACCC, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and Consumer Affairs Victoria, as well as The Age, the Nine Network and the Herald and Weekly Times.

Sadly, they were also sent to people who had complained to authorities about the Ranas' NuEra Health Clinic: the relatives of cancer sufferers, who in their last weeks of life had paid Rana up to $35,000 for useless remedies in the belief that he could miraculously rid them of cancer.

The ACCC has already sued the Ranas using civil provisions of the Trade Practices Act.

In May, Federal Court judge Donnell Ryan ruled that Rana and his sons, Micheal and Christopher, had engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct "of the most reprehensible kind", and that their actions constituted "consistently cynical and heartless exploitation of cancer victims and their relatives when . . . at their most vulnerable".

The criminal charges against Paul and Micheal Rana relate to their alleged failure to respond to the ACCC's demands for documents about certain companies in the NuEra group.

Micheal Rana's barrister, James Samargis, told the court on Wednesday that his client would argue that there were no documents to produce and that he had provided some answers for his father or brother, Christopher, to pass on to the ACCC.

"It was his understanding that that had occurred," Mr Samargis said.

Mr Samargis said his client was "very trusting, unusually so, and naive", and that he had made mistakes that he regretted, but he had been strongly influenced by his father.

Paul Rana declined to tell the court if he would plead guilty or not guilty.

He claimed he had been very busy when he received the ACCC's demand, that fellow directors had "abandoned their positions", and that his hands were full dealing with sick clients.

"Other things happened and we are talking about people's lives," Rana said.

"You know, I had 15 terminally ill patients in my clinic and they were my priority."

Justice North told Rana that "the time for bargaining and alternative views of the world is obviously past". He scheduled the trial to begin at 10.15am tomorrow.

© 2007 The Age

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