Heritage fight back in court

A MAN who illegally demolished his heritage home at Mt Stuart amid plans to build a $1.2 million townhouse development, has returned to fight his case in court.

THE ongoing saga of a developer who illegally pulverised his 1800s heritage-listed home atop Mount Stuart to make way for four modern townhouses has returned to court.

On Monday, Darko Krajinovic appeared in the Hobart Magistrates Court over five charges related to the alleged removal of stone footings at the site, which seemingly “disappeared” after October 2018.

Mr Krajinovic has denied removing the footings, and that if he did, he had done so unknowingly.

Prosecutor Tom Cox said Mr Krajinovic had a disregard for council planning permits and believed “he can do what he likes with the property”, to the point that he would “even lie about those works”.

“We say the circumstantial evidence is so compelling – it’s clearly a fact that they were removed, and the inference is it was by him – he was operating the excavator. No-one else whatsoever would have had any interest in these footings,” he argued before Magistrate Jackie Hartnett.

Mr Cox argued Mr Krajinovic’s motive for removing the footings was financial.

Defence lawyer Dexter Marcenko said Mr Krajinovic didn’t remove the footings, questioning whether a council officer ever really saw the structures at all.

He said the footings could have fallen inside the imprint of the house rather than being demolished, could have fallen over during the asbestos-removal process, and argued that if his client did indeed knock them down, it was by accident.

“It is a reasonable hypothesis that if … Mr Krajinovic knocked over the wall, he may have done so unknowingly in that it wasn’t visible to him. He was in a five-tonne excavator,” he said.

He also said that vandals could have been responsible.

“These graffiti artists certainly didn’t have much respect for what remained of the property,” he said.

Mr Krajinovic was previously convicted and fined $225,000 after pleading guilty to nine charges related to the home’s demotion in February 2017.

He has now pleaded not guilty to five charges relating to the footings, including failure to ensure demolition work complied with the Building Act, failure to engage a building surveyor, and undertaking a development contrary to a planning scheme.