Independent Commission against Corruption

Things are getting tough for the dodgy Labor ratbags in NSW, even their own party is over them:

Former Labor ministers Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald are set to be expelled from the party within days after a call by NSW Opposition Leader John Robertson following evidence at the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Mr Robertson wrote to NSW Labor Party general secretary Sam Dastyari on Wednesday.

”I write to request that you expel Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald from the Labor Party immediately on the basis that they have brought the party into disrepute,” he wrote.

”Brought the party into disrepute”: Ian Macdonald.

”These are extraordinary circumstances and I request you take action as soon as practicable.”

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The dodgy ALP ratbags at the centre of corruption proceedings in NSW will get a bit of a reprieve as public submissions have finished.

After more than three months of sensational evidence, the NSW anti-corruption watchdog has finished hearing from witnesses in its inquiry into allegedly tainted coalfields deals involving senior NSW Labor figures.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has been probing whether then mines minister Ian Macdonald rigged a 2008 tender process for a coal exploration licence in the NSW upper Hunter and how former Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid may have gained.

It’s claimed Mr Macdonald did the bidding of Obeid family members, who allegedly hid their involvement in the area through complex trust and company structures.

The Obeids stood to make up to $100 million from mining deals in the area from corruption at a level not seen since the days of the Rum Corps, the inquiry was told.

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Looks like this ratbag’s mental health break didn’t work:

It was Saturday morning and classical music was floating through solicitor John Gerathy’s multimillion-dollar waterfront apartment in Woolloomooloo. ”You have got me at an inopportune moment,” said Gerathy when he picked up the phone. ”I have got some guests here at home. They’ve come to visit,” he said.

Only last month, the Herald revealed that Gerathy, 67, had checked himself into a mental health facility, telling corruption investigators he was too ill to give evidence.

However, the Independent Commission Against Corruption, which has all but finished inquiries in Operation Jasper, will be sitting this week to hear two vital witnesses who have previously been unavailable: Gerathy and the Obeids’ accountant, Sid Sassine, who has been overseas.

Gerathy declined to discuss the nature of his illness. When asked if he had recovered, he replied: ”I am not sure about that.” Would he be giving evidence on Tuesday? ”Oh, well, I, ah, I hope so,” he said.  Read more »

Perhaps the most fun in politics right now is watching the dodgy ALP ratbags get their beans in Australia at the moment:

THE words packed all the power of a hunting rifle in the crowded hearing room high above Sydney’s streets.

”Look, Mr Macdonald, what I really want to put to you is that in fact you’re a crook.”

The accusation, from the lips of counsel assisting the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), Geoffrey Watson, SC, seemed to suck all the air out of the commission’s gallery.

Ian Macdonald, the fellow being accused of skulduggery, was a cabinet minister in the New South Wales Parliament until 2010, when, having gained the sobriquet Sir Lunchalot, he resigned after a spot of bother concerning misuse of public funds.

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The dodgy Labor and union ratbags in Australia are being skewered daily by the ICAC. Ian Macdonald appears to have had 14 banka accounts  I suppose he might have worried about misplacing a couple.

The disgraced former resources minister Ian Macdonald had 14 separate bank accounts during his time as a NSW cabinet minister, a corruption inquiry has been told.

Mr Macdonald accepted it might be possible he had that many, but suggested some might be related to several “farm enterprises”, and said he didn’t know whether all of them were “operational”.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption is questioning Mr Macdonald over almost $200,000 in loans he had received from his former best friend, Greg Jones.

Mr Jones was also a secret investor in Cascade Coal, which was awarded a lucrative exploration licence in 2009 over a coal tenement at Mt Penny, near Mudgee, which is the subject of the inquiry.

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The ICAC investigations into the dodgy union and ALP ratbags is fascinating. They even hired a private investigator to follow and dig up dirt on journalists who were exposing their crooked behaviour:

A BARRISTER appearing for an allegedly corrupt player in the current ICAC inquiry asked me this week if I had seen House of Cards, an English political thriller in which conservative politician Francis Urquhart deploys blackmail and other nefarious methods to achieve his political ambitions.

There were two things I recalled about the program, and one of them was that the journalist met with a sticky end, still clutching her tape recorder as she fell to her death.

It was therefore with some disquiet that I learnt one of the central figures who has appeared at the recent Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry approached a private detective to have me followed.

The private eye, who doesn’t want to be named, thought I had better know that in mid-2012 Moses Obeid came to his office wanting his family’s homes and businesses swept for ICAC bugs. The other thing he wanted was ”to have you placed under surveillance”, the investigator said.

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Thieving ALP ratbag Craig Thomson is having a big sook about being treated like every other charged criminal. Not for these union and ALP ratbags it seems…they want to be treated special:

More and more information is coming out about Thomson, the man who props up Julia Gillard’s government.  Read more »

The ALP really is full of dodgy union connected ratbags:

The son of ALP powerbroker Eddie Obeid has admitted that the former resources minister Ian Macdonald provided him with a list of mining companies which included the name of a company which went on to win six of 11 licences subsequently put to tender by the government.

And Moses Obeid conceded that his father, who was head of the faction which picked the ALP’s last three state premiers, had been kept informed of negotiations to sell a family farm which sat within one of these licence tenements: “We were not going to hide from him that the family farm was going to be sold … He knew about it.”  Read more »

Labor is being punished as day after day their utter corruption is being exposed in the media and the courts:

A WATER services company linked to the family of ALP kingpin Eddie Obeid gave shares worth as much as $3.75 million to the former treasurer Michael Costa three years after he stopped a public tender that threatened the company’s future.

The share package came with his appointment last year as chairman of the company, an appointment brokered by Mr Obeid and one of his sons.

A Herald investigation has also established that Mr Obeid lobbied his colleagues on behalf of the company, Australian Water Holdings, as it pushed for a billion-dollar privatisation of part of the state-owned Sydney Water Corporation.

The revelations come as an inquiry by the Independent Commission Against Corruption continues to unearth evidence to suggest the Obeids ran a vast but secret enterprise that capitalised on Mr Obeid’s political power.

The family’s multimillion-dollar interests in coal leases, harbour-front cafes and even a health services company were all furthered by Mr Obeid, who used his influence as head of the ALP’s dominant parliamentary faction to lobby ministers.

As a cabinet minister, Mr Costa was lobbied by Mr Obeid in relation to two of these ventures – and now he has confirmed that Mr Obeid also approached him in relation to Australian Water Holdings, a private water company.

The ALP is being torn apart daily by revelations from the Independent Commission Against Corruption. Australia is lucky to have such a body to uncover such misfeasance.

With my investigations into unions here, along with the Owl, I think there is certainly the possibility that a “disgraceful horde of cockroaches” are running the unions here as well

Consider the sordid details emerging in the Independent Commission Against Corruption of the alleged corruption entrenched in the NSW Labor government that ruled for 16 years. It exposes what appear to be a disgraceful horde of cockroaches abusing their power, enriching themselves, betraying the people and corroding the institutions of governance and public order.

Where was the Labor leadership when all this was going on? How many moments were missed as these creatures infested the system?

The ABC reporter Sabra Lane this week asked Bob Carr, premier for the first 10 of those 16 years and now Foreign Affairs Minister, “Are you ashamed by the revelations?”

Carr, who has not been implicated in any corrupt dealings, declined to comment on the ground that it was a matter before ICAC.