‘Tricky, not dishonest’: ICAC witness dodges questions about fake invoices

Follow our live coverage of the ICAC hearing here.NSW Liberal apparatchik and Reformers member Robert Assaf has told a corruption inquiry that fake invoices sent for work that was never carried out were part of a “tricky” tax scheme rather than dishonesty.Assaf, who formed the right-wing Catholic group within the Liberals, on Friday told the Independent Commission Against Corruption that he knew of the “concept” of illegal donations but never thought the Reformers were doing anything wrong in accepting payments, including from hotelier Michael O’Hara.NSW Reformers founder Robert Assaf arrives at ICAC on Friday.James BrickwoodThe ICAC is probing whether undeclared political donations were made by prohibited donors, including O’Hara, to a company called Beckington. The donations were intended to support the Reformers.Assaf said he was aware of the “concept” of prohibited donors and knew that some donations to political parties needed to be declared over a threshold, but did not think the Reformers were doing anything wrong.“If someone told me [at] any point before I got my first summons to this, that what I had done was a problem, I would have gone straight to the electoral commission and reported it and sorted it out,” Assaf said.“I can’t recall any time where we discussed ‘are we doing something wrong?’; we never thought that way.”Assaf has told the commission on Friday that O’Hara paid Beckington, rather than the Reformers directly, for “tricky” tax purposes rather than to hide potentially unlawful political donations.Commissioner Fabian Gleeson asked Assaf a “straightforward honesty question”.“I’m asking you to put aside for the moment the question of whether or not it’s appropriate from a tax perspective, do you think it’s honest at the time?” Gleeson asked.“Did you think it was honest for Beckington to issue an invoice claiming money for consultancy services that it said it was providing Mr O’Hara’s company, when in fact no such consultancy services were being provided, as we understand the evidence?”Assaf said he would have thought it was “tricky”.“Why do you have a difficulty, Mr Assaf, in distinguishing between tricky and honest conduct?” Gleeson asked. “Why do you characterise them as merely tricky, but you seem to baulk at the characterisation that it’s dishonest conduct by Beckington?”Assaf said he was not aware of how problematic it was, and just thought of it as tricky in an accounting sense.Assaf told the commission that he and other Reformers were “immature and young” and used money from the group as an advance for personal expenditure, which he says they would pay back.In one case, Reformers cash was used to pay for a buck’s party – either for Assaf or Christian Ellis, although he could not remember which since both men got married about the same time.Senior right-wing MP Damien Tudehope, who has featured heavily in evidence this week through his role in backing the religious group the Reformers, will appear before the commission on Monday.Tudehope has stood aside from Liberal leader Kellie Sloane’s frontbench while the inquiry is under way because of his ties to many of the witnesses. He has denied any wrongdoing and is not a person of interest.On Tuesday, a businessman called Frits Mare will appear. Mare gave explosive evidence to the 2023 parliamentary inquiry into branch stacking in The Hills Shire Council.That inquiry heard Jean-Claude Perrottet and Christian Ellis, both persons of interest in this ICAC inquiry, asked Mare for $50,000 to fund a branch operation to unseat Scott Morrison’s right-hand man Alex Hawke from his federal electorate. Mare wanted no part in their scheme.The bulk of the week will then be spent hearing from Perrottet, who was a key member of the Reformers. The inquiry heard this week that Perrottet paid for branch memberships and also wanted to be paid for his work stacking branches.Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.From our partners