Ralph Blewitt "to be dealt with" by WA Police next week over his role in AWU Scandal
Monday, 06 March 2017
On 10 February this year Ralph Blewitt wrote to WA Police
A couple of days ago Ralph received this formal notice from Western Australia Police
Mr Ralph BLEWITT,
Thank you for your email. Sorry for taking some time to reply to you but I needed to make the appropriate arrangements.
If you are still travelling to Perth in March, could you please attend the XXXXX office located on XXXXXXX Perth at XXXX on Thursday 16 March 2017 and we will deal with the matter at that time.
"We will deal with the matter at that time" sounds a bit heroic to me given the sheer volume of criminal matters arising from the scandal and the extent of Ralph's knowledge as to who did what, where and when.
Ralph has responded to the police with a very interesting note that I'll publish separately - for now it's worth a quick recap of the glacial investigation of the scandal.
From November 2012 Ralph Blewitt has been enthusiastically available to police dealing with the AWU Scandal.
He made his first round of statements to Victoria Police almost 5 years ago.
After his initial round of statements, Ralph revisited Victoria Police and attended the TURC voluntarily, returning to Australia from his home in Malaysia at no expense to authorities.
In April 2015 Ralph was advised by Victoria Police that charges against him were "imminent", as Hedley Thomas reported in The Australian at the time.
Charges over AWU slush fund to return focus to Julia Gillard
- The Australian
-
National Chief CorrespondentBrisbane
Former prime minister Julia Gillard is facing further scrutiny of her role in helping to set up a fraudulent union slush fund as Victorian police prepare to charge a key player in the saga.
A senior Victoria Police detective has told self-confessed AWU bagman and fraudster Ralph Blewitt that he will very soon be criminally charged over his role in the union slush fund set up with Ms Gillard’s legal advice.
Mr Blewitt said yesterday he intended to plead not guilty and would instruct his lawyers to subpoena witnesses, including Ms Gillard, to give evidence under oath.
Detective Sergeant Ross Mitchell of the Fraud Squad, who has been leading the two-year investigation, which provided key evidence to the ongoing royal commission into union graft, has told Mr Blewitt that at least two charges will be levelled in Victoria.
Mr Blewitt, who has admitted his involvement in fraud with his friend and former union boss Bruce Wilson, and their slush fund, the Australian Workers Union Workplace Reform Association, yesterday said he understood others would be charged.
“Victoria Police are now recommending that I be charged over the frauds that were committed in Victoria, and the matter is going to the public prosecutor’s office,’’ Mr Blewitt, who is visiting Perth, told The Australian.
“I welcome the charges because I have co-operated with the police for over two years and I want to see others who were involved also made accountable.”
Mr Blewitt, who lives in Malaysia, said he had been told to brace for additional charges in Western Australia where the slush fund was incorporated in the early 1990s. It received hundreds of thousands of dollars for non-existent work from companies including the building giant Thiess. He said Victoria Police had recently sent a dossier of evidence to WA detectives with the aim of launching a prosecution process in that state, too.
Sergeant Mitchell, who attended the royal commission’s public hearings into the AWU slush fund last year, declined to comment yesterday.
Mr Blewitt said he had no regrets about incriminating himself and alleging fraud against others such as Mr Wilson, the former client and boyfriend of Ms Gillard.
The royal commission’s head, former High Court judge Dyson Heydon, delivered findings in late December that Ms Gillard was duped by her corrupt boyfriend and client in helping him set up a fraudulent union slush fund that had one purpose, “swindling”, but she did not commit any crimes as it raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
He found that her “casual and haphazard work” as a solicitor at Slater & Gordon in the early 1990s permitted the swindling to flourish and she became the unknowing beneficiary of thousands of dollars, the proceeds of crime, funnelled her way by Mr Wilson.
Mr Heydon, who recommended that Mr Wilson and Mr Blewitt face prosecution for multiple fraud-related offences, criticised Ms Gillard’s determination to deny under oath that thousands of dollars — “wads of notes” — were handed to her by Mr Wilson during the renovation of her Melbourne home, as witnessed by a builder, Athol James.
Another witness, Wayne Hem, was also found to be truthful about $5000 being deposited in her bank account.
Ms Gillard has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, and she has categorically rejected “any suggestion that anyone other than I paid Mr Athol James for the work he performed at (my property).”
ENDS
Quite a few significant events happened around that time in Victoria.
On 29 November 2014 the Andrews Labor/CFMEU government was elected.
ON 29 December 2014 Ken Lay resigned as Chief Commissioner of Police.
On 10 April 2015 the Victoria Police Association re-affiliated with the Trades Hall Council after breaking ties in June 2012 a few months into Ken Lay's tenure.
On 22 April 2015 John Cain Jr was appointed Victoria's Solicitor for Public Prosecutions.
ON 25 May 2015 the Andrews Government hand-picked Graham Ashton as Chief Commissioner of Police. Andrews later installed his former chief advisor into the office of the Chief Commissioner, appointing him as Ashton's chief of staff. This from The Australian at the time:
Victoria Police chief Graham Ashton has effectively destroyed his relationship with the state Coalition by hiring the former right-hand man to Labor Premier Daniel Andrews as his permanent chief of staff.
Brett Curran was Mr Andrews’ most senior adviser in opposition and ran the office of a senior minister in the previous Labor government. But Mr Ashton has ignored a backlash from Liberals and Nationals and hired Mr Curran as his chief of staff, despite a key part of his job being to act as an intermediary between political figures and the Chief Commissioner.
It is the first time in recent memory that a former political operative of Mr Curran’s standing has been handed the role, making it problematic for the Coalition to deal with Mr Ashton’s office.
Coalition police spokesman Edward O’Donohue yesterday blasted the appointment, declaring that it “beggars belief’’ that the force could not find a politically independent person.
As the original complainant to police in the matter I made many approaches to Ashton's office last year asking about the progress of the investigation. As a result of Ashton's sustained intransigence I lodged a complaint with Victoria Police internal affairs - it was only after that complaint that I received any formal reply from Ashton's office. And the reply? I'd have to lodge an FOI application and try my luck to get any info at all.
I think it's significant that Wade Noonan the former Police Minister in the Andrews Government took stress leave in February 2016 after just one year in the job. The Noonans are a very well known policing family and while Wade Noonan took a different path as a trade unionist, he'd have been copping it from both sides over politically charged decisions, particularly with the CFMEU so militant and active. Here's part of John Silvester's report about Noonan published 5 December 2015 in The Age.
Talk to senior police and they say Noonan understands. He will support them when it matters but is no yes man. He demands all the details on any proposal so that if he agrees he can mount a persuasive argument inside Cabinet.
While his background is as a union organiser his family has been close to policing for nearly 30 years.
After the 1986 murder of Constable Angela Taylor in the Russell Street Bombing, Wade's father Bill established a memorial run and walk in her name and later became a key figure in the Blue Ribbon Foundation.
Noonan's background in unions is handy as virtually all cops are members of the Police Association. He says the government; police command and the association all want the same outcome – a safe and productive workforce equipped to serve the community.
A few weeks after that interview Noonan took stress leave never to return to the police portfolio.
In August 2016 Bill Thompson caught up with Chief Commissioner Ashton and recorded this brief interview in which Ashton denied any knowledge of the status of the AWU investigation.
It's been clear for about a year that Victoria Police have ceased working on the file. The Office of Public Prosecutions in Victoria was apparently instrumental in handballing the files to Western Australian authorities.
And now - after all these years - Ralph Blewitt tells us WA Police are ready to "deal with the matter".
I'll publish Ralph's response to WA Police shortly - it will definitely catch your attention.
But we should all be alarmed a the pace of this matter.
I have no doubt that if Gillard wasn't involved the investigation and prosecutions would have been concluded years ago.
The thought that one law applies to some while a different set of rules applies to Gillard et al is horrifying and unacceptable. And yet that is the irresistible conclusion most reasonable people will come to.
Even worse is the prospect that Blewitt will be loaded up in precisely the way Wilson and Gillard planned - as the fall guy, the man whose name is on the forms set up to take the blame from the outset.
For those of us who care - now is the time to re-energise the interest and passion!
I promised you I'd see the matter through to the prosecutions and you can count on us keeping that promise.
More soon!