Secret emails and meetings in Bunnings car park: ICAC hears how kickback scheme worked

4 hours ago 5

The founder of a now-failed Grafton contracting company who paid kickbacks for work on the state’s roads has told an anti-corruption inquiry that he was instructed to send invoices that he was asked to inflate to a Transport for NSW manager’s personal email account instead of his work account.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption is investigating allegations that Ibrahim Helmy, who worked for Transport for NSW for 15 years, was the mastermind behind corrupt relationships with companies that were paid at least $343 million in contracts. Helmy, 38, failed to appear before ICAC in May and police have a warrant out for his arrest.

Protection Barriers founder Jason Chellew appeared for a second day at ICAC.

Helmy is alleged to have pocketed $11.5 million in kickbacks – including bundles of cash, gold bullion and cryptocurrency – from contractors in return for them being awarded work on the state’s roads.

The commission has heard that Grafton company Protection Barriers was awarded about $100 million of work by Transport for NSW between 2020 and 2024. Eight other companies are also alleged to have been awarded tens of millions worth of work as a result of corrupt relationships with Helmy.

In his second day in the witness stand at a public inquiry into the kickbacks, Protection Barriers founder Jason Chellew was questioned about his arrangements with Helmy and other Transport for NSW staff including projects engineer David Liu, who was based in Newcastle.

Chellew confirmed that he paid cash kickbacks of $50 an hour to Liu during a period when Transport for NSW was hiring a truck and driver from his company. The inquiry heard that the pair met a number of times at Bunnings car parks or Protection Barriers’ warehouse in Tomago near Newcastle, which Chellew said probably involved handing Liu some money.

Cash and gold bullion were among the items seized from Ibrahim Helmy’s house.

Asked if Liu ever suggested that he could do something for Chellew in return for paying kickbacks, Chellew said: “I’d say so ... but I can’t recall.”

He did recall that Helmy told him that Transport for NSW contracts officer Mukesh Patel would have known what was going on in terms of their arrangement in about 2021. Helmy is alleged to have said: “Give him a bit of a drink.”

The inquiry heard that the phrase about providing a drink referred to handing over some money. Chellew confirmed that inflation of work orders was likely to have come to the attention of Patel given his role, but that he never paid money to him.

Chellew was also grilled about whether his arrangement with Helmy extended beyond inflation of work orders to the inflation of quotes. “Possibly, yes,” Chellew said in response to questions from counsel assisting Rob Ranken, SC.

At times, Chellew communicated with Helmy, whose role at Transport for NSW involved procurement of contractors, via his personal email account rather than his work email.

Chellew acknowledged that Helmy had asked him to send draft invoices to his private email account so that the latter could review them and give instructions about how they could be inflated.

He also said that Helmy suggested that he set up a second company – JC Labour – which would give the appearance of being separate to Protection Barriers, allowing it to bid for work on the same Transport for NSW procurement panel and spread the work.

“I really didn’t want to set another company up. I thought it was too risky to put two companies on the panel. I wasn’t keen at all,” Chellew told the hearing.

He agreed that a concern was that it might lead to the detection of an improper relationship with Helmy.

Chellew also confirmed that on occasions the methodology that was used under the arrangement of work for kickbacks with Helmy was to inflate initial quotes, while another was to inflate invoices that were submitted.

On Monday, Chellew told the inquiry that he handed large amounts of cash to Helmy when they met at service stations and other locations before starting cryptocurrency payments from about 2021. The payments were made in return for millions of dollars of work on state roads.

It is alleged that Chellew paid a total of $227,000 in cash to Helmy between 2020 and 2024, $60,000 worth of gold bullion nuggets in 2023, and cryptocurrency payments totalling about $8.97 million from 2021 to 2024.

The NSW Crime Commission has seized property and assets from Chellew and his wife, Meshel, and their related entities worth more than $41 million, including $735,000 in cryptocurrency, a 2023 Lexus car worth about $160,000, and two 2024 Bentleys each worth about $500,000. In addition, it confiscated multiple properties owned by the Chellews in NSW and Queensland worth $15 million.

Chellew told the hearing on Tuesday that about 10 properties had since been sold to pay about $17 million in debt owed to the National Australia Bank. Protection Barriers was placed into administration in May.

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