Fire!

[Nickatilynx]

Lasrado certain office fire is arson attack
Cameron Atfield
27jun05
FLAMBOYANT Brisbane businessman Greg Lasrado is convinced he was deliberately targeted by arsonists.



As he sifted through the charred remains of his burnt-out office for the first time yesterday afternoon, Mr Lasrado said he knew who was responsible.

"If you ask me to give a percentage likelihood (that it was arson), I would say 100 per cent," said Mr Lasrado, who built a property empire after making his fortune in Internet pornography.

He said he had received several threats in recent months, but a confidentiality agreement with a television program prevented him expanding on his claims.

Mr Lasrado had been out of the office, in a building which is adjacent to his Kratzman House mansion, for "only a couple of hours" when it went up in smoke.

"I came to the roundabout and noticed there was smoke coming from the top of the hill, so I knew it was my place," he said.

The blaze could also affect the sale of the Lamont St mansion, in Brisbane's inner-western suburb of St Lucia, which Mr Lasrado expected to sell for a record $10 million.

"It might be a little bit harder to sell now. It's pretty devastating to see it like this," he said.

"I'll just have to pick up and start again, I guess."

The one consolation for Mr Lasrado was that nobody was hurt in the fire.

"Normally I would have been here but I just ducked out to JB Hi-Fi to buy something to back up my hard drives," he said, looking over the remains of a computer.

Mr Lasrado estimated the damage to the building at between $600,000 and $900,000, plus "about a million dollars" worth of items in the office.

"I had about 2000 photos of my little girl on disk – that's the sort of thing you can't get back."

A police spokeswoman said the fire was being treated as suspicious and investigations into the blaze would continue.

She said police had several leads.

http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/comm...55E3102,00.html