A West Vancouver real estate agent who lost his licence and was banned from the industry for five years, following a misconduct complaint, has failed to have his discipline overturned in B.C. Supreme Court.
In January 2015, Shahin Behroyan oversaw the sale of a West Vancouver home that included him getting a $75,000-bonus on top of his usual commission, effectively doubling his total income from the sale. But after the sale, the original owner filed a formal complaint with the Real Estate Council of B.C.
The complaint included allegations of “misrepresentation and nondisclosure, deceptive dealing and dishonesty, conflict of interest, and failing to act with reasonable care and skill in the best interests of his client,” B.C. Supreme Court Justice Nigel Kent noted in his ruling handed down on July 14.
When the council’s disciplinary committee issued a decision in October 2017, its members found five instances of misconduct and dismissed two, though Kent’s ruling doesn’t specify which. The following May, Behroyan’s licence was suspended for one year and he was ordered to pay a fine of $7,500. plus $59,000 in enforcement costs, and take a course on ethics.
He appealed both the decision and his penalty to the Financial Services Tribunal of B.C., while the Superintendent of Real Estate appealed the penalty, arguing it was too lenient, the ruling states.
The appeal resulted in two of the findings of professional misconduct being overturned because they were “in error,” the ruling notes. The FST member sent Behroyan’s file back to the Real Estate Council’s discipline committee, which by then had new members serving on it, to reconsider what the appropriate penalty should be.
Behroyan submitted in February 2020 that a reprimand would suffice or, if a suspension was required, it should be for no more than one month, court documents show. But the council said his licence should be cancelled along with a five-year prohibition, plus a $10,000 fine.
The second disciplinary committee agreed with the council, and Behroyan lost his licence.
Behroyan appealed again to the Financial Services Tribunal, which upheld the second decision in August 2021.
Most recently, Behroyan petitioned the B.C. Supreme Court for a judicial review, arguing the second discipline committee had no jurisdiction to increase his original penalty and that the unusual process had been “arbitrary and unreasonable,” the ruling notes.
Having two of the misconduct claims dismissed by the second committee while coming away with a stiffer penalty was an “embarrassing inconsistency,” Behroyan argued, and was “intolerable and patently unreasonable.”
Concluding his written ruling, Kent conceded the “optics of this case are unfortunate,” however, he found there were no legal grounds for Behroyan’s petition for judicial review.
“I disagree with Mr. Behroyan’s characterization of the increased penalty as simply the ‘whims’ of different decision-makers. There was nothing whimsical about the second discipline committee penalty reconsideration decision, let alone the FST's ultimate endorsement of the same. The process employed here was exactly what Mr. Behroyan requested of both the FST ... and from the second discipline committee; namely, a fresh reconsideration of penalty in which the first penalty decision was to have no bearing,” he wrote. “Mr. Behroyan cannot now complain that the very process he wanted should be considered arbitrary and unreasonable simply because he is dissatisfied with the result.”
Kent dismissed Behroyan’s petition and ordered him to pay the superintendent of real estate’s legal costs.
