Forgery alleged on contract benefiting union leader
By Martin Daly
December 17, 2004
A Melbourne man testified yesterday that a signature on a contract giving tens of thousands of dollars a year to a company secretly run by a former president of the Melbourne University Student Union is a forgery.
In the Victorian Supreme Court, lawyers for the liquidator winding up MUSU examined a contract for services to the union by a company called the BV Sachsen Group Australia Pty Ltd. BV Sachsen was set up by Darren Kenneth Ray, MUSU president in 2002, who used the name Marcus Kemp to mask his identity and win lucrative business deals from the union.
In 2003, new union president Scott Crawford signed an agreement that substantially increased payments to the company.
Ray and Crawford are still students at the university.
The new deal gave Ray's company up to $30,000 more a year on the contract, initially listed at $43,000 a year, for three years.
The document was purportedly witnessed by Miles Clemens, who had been hired by Ray, alias, Marcus Kemp, to work for BV Sachsen.
Mr Clemens told Garry Bigmore, QC, for the union's liquidator, that the signature was not his.
"I have never witnessed a signature between BV Sachsen and MUSU," Mr Clemens said.
MUSU, with a budget of about $14 million a year, was dissolved in February, allegedly after widespread theft, fraud and the awarding of suspect contracts at huge financial disadvantage to the union.
Ray's company is one of a number uncovered by liquidator Dean McVeigh, from the Melbourne firm Foremans, in which former members of the union and some of its former leaders allegedly got lucrative contracts based on friendships and Labor Party affiliations with elected union office holders.
The court has already heard that Labor Party figure Andrew Landeryou - now being sought under an arrest warrant to compel him to appear in the case - and former MUSU president Benjamin Cass, also known as Duncan Fisher, used the "Marbain Group" to win lucrative union business.
The Marbain Group was given a union contract for the lease of university food outlets, allegedly on highly preferential terms, and then on-sold the rights for a profit of more than $1 million. The liquidator has traced the money to a bank in Hong Kong. The liquidator's lawyer was yesterday granted permission to hand their examiners' files to police to assist in criminal investigations.
Student union paper trail leads to HK bank
By Martin Daly
December 10, 2004
Liquidators are seeking a court order to find out where $1 million from food and drink contracts went.
Investigators have uncovered a paper trail leading to a Chinese bank where $1 million from an allegedly suspect deal involving the former Melbourne University Student Union was parked.
The money came from a deal involving student leaders and Labor Party powerbrokers and friends, on and off campus, who are alleged to have improperly got lucrative university food and drink contracts and then on-sold them for $1.2 million - most, or all or it, profit.
Most of the money was transferred from the ANZ Bank in Lygon Street, Carlton, to the account of Wellwin Nominees at the headquarters of the Hang Seng Bank in Hong Kong, but it disappeared from the bank the next day. The bank refused to tell the union liquidators where the money went, and yesterday they petitioned courts in Hong Kong to order the bank to open its files so they could track and recoup the money.
The cash transfer bears a signature purporting to be that of of Matthew Keats, a director of Marbain, the company granted leases to two outlets and a licence for a third. Gary Bigmore, QC, on behalf of the liquidators, described Keats in the Supreme Court of Victoria as a "stooge" director.
The court has heard suggestions that Keats was used to front Marbain, because those allegedly behind it, Labor Party identity Andrew Landeryou - son of former ALP powerbroker, Bill Landeryou - and former MUSU president Benjamin Cass, wanted to mask their involvement.
The liquidators will also move today in the Supreme Court for an arrest warrant for Andrew Landeryou, sacked as president of the MUSU in 1991 for alleged mismanagement, and who liquidators have repeatedly failed to serve with a summons to appear in court, despite sending emails and voice mails and trying to serve him through his wife, Kimberley Kitching.
The once-powerful and wealthy students' union collapsed amid allegations of widespread fraud and in February was ordered to be wound up by the Supreme Court.
The collapse began after the then union president, Darren Ray, and general secretary Tim Lysle Williams, signed a contract with the Melbourne-based Optima Development Group, with which Andrew Landeryou is alleged to have been involved, to build student accommodation in the city at a cost of $46 million, a deal auditors warned could send the union broke. Mr Landeryou has been alleged in court to have asked a factory worker, Andrew Rigby, to be a stooge director of Optima.
Darren Ray and Tim Lisle-Williams also signed commercial agreements on December 27, 2002, granting Marbain leases on the MUSU bar, known as U-Bar, on the food outlet Dough, and a licence for the food outlet Professors Court.
Marbain allegedly then on-sold the rights for $1.2 million, $1 million of which was transferred to Hong Kong.
In February, Mr Ray was granted almost $5000 by Marbain's Mathew Keats, to cover an election debt.
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/12/09/1102182424671.html