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A local construction company wound up on the wrong side of the law when the strain of finding lodgings for interstate workers during Floriade was too great, a court has heard.
 
Two men were yesterday fined $4450 and convicted after authorities discovered 36 employees were sharing nine bedrooms and three bathrooms in a Weetangera property.
 
Alexei Vaskeivich Guan and Kostinken Pohorukov yesterday faced the ACT Magistrates Court after pleading guilty to running the unlicensed boarding house.
 
The two men, directors of local building company Tildon Interiors, were also charged with allowing insanitary conditions to exist at the property.
 
Through their lawyer, the pair said the overcrowding only lasted four or five weeks and they had since arranged for their employees to stay in a number of hotels across Canberra as well as properties in Mawson.
 
But the court heard back in September last year the directors were trying to accommodate their interstate workforce when Floriade left the capital with no room at the inn.
 
The Weetangera property, owned by the company, was used as an incentive to entice out-of-state workers to take up positions at job sites in Canberra.
 
But government inspectors shut the house down in September 22 and ordered the premises to be vacated after they found what appeared to be enough beds to sleep 36 people.
 
Inspectors found a large amount of bedding and personal items; mould on a bedroom ceiling; mould, soot, dirt and grease in the kitchen; and mould in the bathroom.
 
They also described, in a court document, the common areas being ''in a poor state'' and a green, stagnant pool likely to serve as a fertile breeding ground for the mosquitoes.
 
Kostinken said, through his lawyer, he had no knowledge of the overcrowding and was ''shocked'' when he found out.
 
The prosecution argued the directors had reasonable grounds to be aware there were so many people staying at the property, and that the conditions were so poor.
 
The court heard both Guan and Kostinken were unaware they had to get a licence to run a boarding house. Neither man had any relevant past convictions.
 
Magistrate Beth Campbell said the house appeared to be more akin to a ''ghastly student bedsit'' than a ''hotbox'' used to accommodate impoverished foreign migrant workers.
 
Thursday, 01 December, 2011
By Louis Andrews, Court Reporter
The Canberra Times