Why Arthur Sinodinos fails the pub test

When a Queanbeyan-based Liberal Party official rang the party's head office in Sydney prior to the 2011 NSW election, he had some good news and some bad news.

The good news was he had a potential $20,000 donation for the party. The bad news was that it came from an "illegal" donor as property developers had been banned from donating to NSW political parties since late 2009.

But the NSW head office told Wayne Brown, a country representative of the party's state executive, that it wasn't a problem.

"They said developers have to donate to the Free Enterprise Foundation … that's the only way they can actually donate," Mr Brown told the Independent Commission Against Corruption in 2014.

What was even more astonishing was that Mr Brown had to drive the cheque to Sydney, rather than driving the short distance to Canberra, where the FEF was based.

Mr Brown personally handed it to Liberal Party finance director Simon McInnes, who "took one look at it" and passed it over the party's chief fundraiser, Paul Nicolaou.

This week a series of payments made by the FEF to the NSW division of the Liberal party suddenly thrust the organisation back into the national spotlight.

In an explosive finding, the NSW electoral commission found it had graduated from providing privacy for donors to accommodating illegal contributions by "washing" them through the yawning governance gap in state and federal donations laws.

The ruling not only saw the NSW Liberal Party threatening to take the commission to the Supreme Court but also raised fresh questions about the involvement of one of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's most trusted advisors, cabinet secretary Senator Arthur Sinodinos.

Property developers can donate federally and this was the beauty of the Canberra-based FEF. Money could be donated there. But it was illegal for those donations to be sent back to NSW to be used for a state campaign.

The list of donors to the FEF reads like a who's who of Australian business: Frank Lowy's Westfield; Harry Triguboff's Meriton Apartments; Walker Group; Village Roadshow; and Austral Bricks.

Five years ago, they helped pour more than $1 million into the accounts of the secretive ACT organisation.

If you have never heard of the FEF, you are far from alone. Despite its high profile contributors, The FEF and its trustee, accountant Anthony Bandle , do not seek the limelight.

But it is fair to say the FEF is one of the more intriguing players in Australian politics in recent years.

The FEF has donated millions of dollars to conservative politics over the past 20 years, almost exclusively to the Liberal party.

This week the electoral commission deemed that the NSW Liberal party was complicit in relation to its use of the FEF to "disguise" the identities of illegal donors to its 2011 state election campaign.

Because of the party's continual refusal to hand over the identities of the donors, the electoral commission has withheld almost $4.4 million in public funding.

This has sent shock waves through the party. Through lawyers, the party wrote to the commission saying this funding was "of critical importance" and if it was not received by the end of April retrenchments were likely.

It was also pointed out that a looming federal election meant the funding was required as "a matter of urgency".

If the funding was not forthcoming, the party would have the commission hauled before the Supreme Court, the letter threatened.

Premier Mike Baird has since been more conciliatory suggesting that head office should bite the bullet and reveal the donors.

Also coming out fighting is Malcolm Turnbull's hand-picked cabinet secretary, Senator Arthur Sinodinos, who was the party's treasurer at the time of the payments.

Sinodinos has demanded the electoral commission excise any mention of him in its damning report, claiming that the party's current refusal to nominate the donors has nothing to do with him.

But the commission said it based its finding on evidence given to the ICAC's landmark 2014 investigation into NSW Liberal party fundraising.

The allegations of questionable donations to the party have dogged Sinodinos ever since his string of "don't recalls" and "don't recollects" reverberated through the hearing room during ICAC's Operation Spicer inquiry.

Under oath, Sinodinos, the party's honorary treasurer and finance committee chairman, refused to accept "any responsibility for money being raised from prohibited donors" who were encouraged to donate via the FEF.

Instead he claimed it was the responsibility of the party agent, finance director Simon McInnes to ensure all was above board, and that it was not his role to "micro-manage" others.

The corruption inquiry heard that the FEF was the single largest donor to the party in the lead-up to the 2011 state poll, giving $700,000. At the 2007 election, held prior to the developer donation bans, the FEF had contributed a mere $50,000.

"What about this for a pub test: the chairman of the finance committee of the Liberal Party didn't know the identity of the single largest donor to the Liberal Party in an election campaign. What do you think about that?" asked counsel-assisting Geoffrey Watson, SC.

Sinodinos repeated his claim "that the responsibility for compliance rested formally with the Party agent."

Paul Nicolaou, the party's former chief fund-raiser, told the inquiry that Sinodinos was chairing a finance committee meeting in 2010 when the idea of washing illicit donations through the FEF was first raised.

Sinodinos said that if he had been present when this was floated "it went over my head"

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/why-arthur-sinodinos-fails-the-pub-test-20160325-gnr0vo.html#ixzz43uMibFbj Follow us: @smh on Twitter | sydneymorningherald on Facebook

See also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/28120

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/21332

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/29244

 

Key Liberal fundraisers sounded out major donors to the party about chipping in to buy a house for Senator Arthur Sinodinos after the collapse of a potentially lucrative money-making venture.

The audacious plan originated in early 2013 after Senator Sinodinos relinquished a 5 per cent stake in Australian Water Holdings, a company that later became the focus of a landmark corruption inquiry.

Fairfax Media had earlier revealed Senator Sinodinos' shareholding in a company that employed Eddie Obeid jnr, the son of controversial Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid.

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At the time Senator Sinodonis said that although his shareholding was recorded on his parliamentary pecuniary interest declaration it was not publicly registered with the corporate regulator "because it was on a gentleman's agreement".

That agreement was with Nick Di Girolamo, AWH's chief executive and a Liberal fundraiser.

Mr Di Girolamo was a central figure in a public inquiry by the Independent Commission Against Corruption that raised allegations of AWH's overcharging and fraudulent billings to Sydney Water, including for political donations.

The inquiry also heard that Senator Sinodinos earned $200,000 a year for "a couple of weeks' work" and that he was employed in that role because as senior Liberal Party office holder he could "open doors".

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/liberal-party-backers-were-approached-to-buy-senator-arthur-sinodinos-a-home-20160325-gnraih.html#ixzz43wZEMNjw
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The fundraising body that has embroiled cabinet secretary Arthur Sinodinos in a campaign finance scandal did not tell NSW authorities it received almost $1 million in donations - including from property developers - the year it gave $693,000 to the Liberal party for the 2011 state election.

The controversial Free Enterprise Foundation (FEF), whose donation to the NSW Liberals is the subject of an escalating dispute with the NSW electoral commission, told the state authority it received no donations in 2010-11.

But it had received $958,000 from companies including Westfield ($150,000), Meriton ($50,000) and Walker Group ($100,000) in the same year - a fact it had disclosed in a separate declaration to the federal Australian Electoral Commission.

Westfield, Meriton and Walker Group were unable to donate to the Liberals' state election campaign as contributions from property developers are prohibited. However, they are allowed to donate to federal election campaigns.

The revelation sheds new light on allegations the FEF was used by the NSW Liberals to funnel illegal donations to its 2011 campaign.

It suggests the foundation did not want state authorities to make the link between the donations it had received and the money it gave to the NSW Liberals for the state election.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/liberallinked-free-enterprise-foundation-failed-to-declare-1m-in-donations-20160327-gnrs1m.html#ixzz44685ir5X 
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The New South Wales Electoral Commission has stood firm on its decision to withhold public campaign funding for the NSW branch of the Liberal party, despite the Coalition frontbencher Arthur Sinodinos threatening it with legal action.

Last week Sinodinos’s lawyers wrote to the commission expressing concern that documents it had published advising of its decision to withhold funds implied that Sinodinos had engaged in wrongdoing.

In 2011, just after the NSW state election, Sinodinos was the branch’s treasurer. He now holds the senior position of cabinet secretary in the federal government.

The commission alleged the party’s fundraising body, the Free Enterprise Foundation, was used to funnel $680,000 in prohibited donations. The branch had refused to disclose all political donations made to the foundation so the commission withheld $4.4m in public campaign funding.

On Thursday the commission responded to Sinodinos’s lawyers saying it would not reconsider the decision to withhold the money, and would not retract the statement in which the decision was published.

Sinodinos has steadfastly rejected any suggestion that he knew prohibited donors were putting money towards the NSW state election.

He acknowledged that the list of donors to the Free Enterprise Foundation included property developers – who have been banned from making donations in NSW since 2009 – but insisted he did not know they were putting money towards state elections.

“That was the universe of potential donors,” he told ABC Radio on Thursday.

“While it was illegal for prohibited donors like property developers and other donors under NSW legislation to make money available to state campaigns, they could still – if they were a property developer or whatever at that stage – provide money for federal campaigns, which some did in 2010, for example.”

He said he had been careful to follow the law on donations.

“No one would be approached where this would involve breaking the law, and that was the clear premise on which the whole of our activities were pursued,” Sinodinos said.

“I wasn’t asked to solicit donors from prohibited donors. None of our people who were on the committee were asked to do that. I was not aware of any scheme whereby we went to prohibited donors to ask them for money via the Free Enterprise Foundation.”

The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, urged the NSW branch to release the list of donors to the commission.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/mar/31/electoral-commission-stands-firm-despite-arthur-sinodinoss-threat-to-sue

 

Oi! There is something in the NSW government called "unsolicited proposals"... For example the Crown Casino of James Packer falls in this category. I am sure that in the Liberal (CONservative) party there is a big room for "unsolicited donations"... One does not have to ask to receive, in this political game. Thus the sin of corruption is not is the asking for illegal donations but in accepting them under whatever cover. That the director or manager or treasurer of such Liberal party knows nothing about where the cash is coming from, is not an excuse. Ignorance or can't remember is not an excuse. When one is in charge of peanut counting, one has to tally the origin of cash — to the last cent.