Former Renewal SA boss John Hanlon and Georgina Vasilevski were secretly recorded discussing review strategy by ICAC
The former Renewal SA boss and a female executive were secretly recorded discussing a Melbourne hotel rendezvous, transcripts tendered to parliament reveal.
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Former Renewal SA boss John Hanlon and a female executive were secretly recorded discussing what they would tell ICAC investigators about why she visited his hotel room on a Melbourne trip over which the pair were accused of wrongly claiming travel expenses.
They were also recorded on ICAC surveillance devices, installed in their offices, talking about where executive Georgina Vasilevski would say she had been staying on the Melbourne Cup week trip in 2017.
Transcripts of the recordings also capture an exchange about how they would handle queries on a lack of meetings on the trip.
Mr Hanlon was recorded directing an employee to explain to Renewal SA’s accounts department why Mr Hanlon had not reimbursed the agency for the cost of the stay at the Grand Hyatt in Melbourne.
Transcripts were included in ICAC Inspector Philip Strickland’s review of ICAC’s handling of its investigation into the Melbourne trip and another that Mr Hanlon took to Germany in the same year.
The review, tabled in state parliament, also revealed that ICAC investigators found Mr Hanlon’s phone records from the Berlin trip showed he had not left that city – at a time when his daughter was due to give birth there – when his original itinerary showed that he was supposed to also visit Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Munich.
Mr Hanlon was charged in 2020 with offences including abuse of public office but always maintained his innocence of claims he spent $15,000 of taxpayer funds on interstate and overseas trips that were really for personal purposes.
The charges were dropped in November 2022 following revelations about ICAC’s unlawful conduct in its investigations. The state government has since paid Mr Hanlon $450,000 for his legal fees and he is seeking millions of dollars in compensation.
Ms Vasilevski was charged with wrongly claiming travel expenses of more than $1000 over the Melbourne trip, but that case was abandoned in 2021 when prosecutors conceded they did not have enough evidence.
In his review, Mr Strickland’s repeatedly stated that ICAC had reasonable grounds for its investigations, but also repeatedly stressed it was not his remit to determine if there had been any wrongdoing by Mr Hanlon or Ms Vasilevski.
The pair, along with another Renewal SA worker referred to as “Employee A” were secretly recorded in Mr Hanlon’s office in September 2018 – by which time they were aware of an ICAC probe into the Melbourne trip – discussing what they would say about being in Mr Hanlon’s hotel room together on a Thursday night.
“Yeah working at night?” Ms Vasilevski says. “Why not,” Mr Hanlon replies, later adding: “You’d have to, you’ll always have to say we’re friends, but nothing... and we were working.”
In the same conversation, Ms Vasilevski says something inaudible followed by “CCTV and I’ve gone into your room and come back out”.
She later says “One room which means” and Mr Hanlon says “same room”, soon followed by: “That’s right you could say ‘I only slept on the couch because I was kicked out of my brother’s place because he’s (inaudible)’.” To which Ms Vasilevski replies: “I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t go down that path.”
On September 24, 2018, Ms Vasilevski told ICAC investigators she only had accommodation documentation for one night out of two because she had stayed “with family” for the second night.
The pair and Employee A also talked about how Mr Hanlon and Ms Vasilevski would explain what they did on one day of the trip.
“Yeah, but that’s the other thing wrong. They will want to know who we met there,’ Mr Hanlon says. Vasilevski replies: “Well we can just say we didn’t... we actually physically didn’t meet anyone. All we did was we went to the university, we went and did a tour of it ourselves, we went and had a look about it ourselves.”
Mr Hanlon refers to visiting an urban renewal project not far from the Melbourne CBD, and a school, “and then we were looking at the land and how it was laid out”.
“We were looking at all of the south end precinct area because we were taking it in. Afterwards we went and had some lunch. You went back. I stayed on.”
Mr Hanlon appears to be worried about how being there during Melbourne Cup week would be perceived.
“And the horse racing, you know Melbourne Cup is Tuesday, there’s a meeting on the Thursday, which we were in, and there’s a meeting on the previous Saturday. Well we weren’t there, we weren’t there for the Melbourne Cup. We were in meetings all day on the Thursday so that’s got nothing to do with the Spring racing.”
Mr Strickland found it was “open to ICAC investigators to form a view that Mr Hanlon and Ms Vasilevski were colluding about their movements in Melbourne”.
A conversation Mr Hanlon had with a worker referred to as “Employee C” was also covertly recorded.
They discussed Mr Hanlon reimbursing Renewal SA for his accommodation at the Grand Hyatt Hotel.
“I want – yeah well just send me something because you’re [a senior employee] saying: John, following the finding of that anomaly where, you know, you requested something to be charged to your account and it wasn’t done. … There seems to be a fault – you know, I want you to say it something like this: There seems to be a fault somewhere in our office system which wouldn’t accept your credit card for a payment in relation to that.”
Regarding the trip to Germany, Mr Strickland’s review included an ICAC investigator’s affidavit about Mr Hanlon’s phone use.
It revealed communication with his daughter in which he confirmed her due date to give birth was September 23.
He cancelled a September 7-19 Europe Business Mission trip and instead rebooked to arrive in Berlin on the 19th, with travel including to three other cities from the 21st to the 28th.
From the phone extraction detailed in the affidavit, the investigator concluded from photos and other communications that Mr Hanlon did not leave Berlin until the 28th.
In his review Mr Strickland noted: “The inquiries raised reasonable suspicions about the purpose of Mr Hanlon’s Germany trip and gave rise to a potential issue of corruption in public administration, particularly considering the investigation that was being undertaken into the Melbourne trip, which involved similar alleged conduct.”
And in the review’s conclusion Mr Strickland stated: “My role is not to examine whether Mr Hanlon was guilty of corrupt or criminal conduct.
“Mr Hanlon has not been convicted of any offence arising out of the ICAC investigation which was the subject of referrals to the DPP.
“Mr Hanlon is entitled to the presumption of innocence and nothing in this report should
be construed as inculpating him in the commission of any criminal offence. I make the
same point in relation to Ms Vasilevski.”
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