‘Four horrendous years’: Former Renewal SA boss John Hanlon speaks out after ICAC case dropped on first day of trial

John Hanlon was under investigation, but his entire family was affected by his lengthy ICAC ordeal – now they say they have their lives back at last.

When ICAC came for John Hanlon, his daughter Millie was upstairs working on her first-ever university assignment.

As investigators rifled the Renewal SA boss’ home for evidence, they took whatever they felt might be pertinent – including Millie’s laptop.

That was in 2019 – on Wednesday, Ms Hanlon postponed her final university exam in order to attend the District Court and watch her father’s vindication.

She embraced her father and her mother, Jenny, as prosecutors finally dropped allegations Mr Hanlon’s $15,000 trip to Germany in 2017 was for personal reasons, not for work.

“It’s been a horrendous four years,” Mr Hanlon told The Advertiser as the family walked out of the courtroom for what they hope will be the final time.

“I’m obviously relieved this is over, but I’m also relieved to have been able to finally expose this shocking example of administration by ICAC and the prosecution.

“They have a duty and responsibility as offices of integrity against corruption … we have found they certainly have a reckless indifference to their impact upon people’s lives.

“At the end of the day, these organisations’ core values and activities need to be completely restructured.”

Former Renewal SA boss John Hanlon, centre, with daughter Millie and wife Jenny after the DPP withdrew all charges against him. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

Nightmare trip

For a time, it seemed Mr Hanlon’s strong family bond had placed him in ICAC’s crosshairs.

Two years before the raid, as he prepared to take a work trip to Germany, he told his eldest, pregnant, European-based daughter Kate he hoped to find time to see her.

Unexpectedly, Millie discovered she had time in her Year 12 schedule – meaning she and Mrs Hanlon could also make the trip and focus on helping Kate.

The plan was so last-minute, so sudden, that tickets were booked on a Friday for a Tuesday departure, with all funds coming from the Hanlons’ personal bank accounts.

The German trip was one of two excursions ICAC would later claim were for personal, not work, reasons and therefore worthy of corruption charges.

But Mr Hanlon would later discover the initial accusations came from somewhere else entirely.

“This started because I disciplined four people in my office for bullying a young woman,” he said.

“The next day, they took fabricated matters to ICAC and, with no evidence at all, ICAC searched my office and my home

“This case was totally self-reported by ICAC – no complaint from the government, nothing from my board, nothing from my Minister.”

The Adelaide Magistrates Court threw out the case against Mr Hanlon in 2021, but prosecutors reactivated it in the District Court. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

Falling apart

Mr Hanlon spent 32 months in court, during which some – but not all – details of ICAC’s secret 18-month investigation emerged.

In June 2021, the Adelaide Magistrates Court threw the case out after former Minister Stephen Mullighan gave evidence that he had approved the trip and its itinerary.

“A very senior politician then advised parliament she was having discussions with prosecutors about taking further action,” Mr Hanlon said.

“Then the prosecution filed an ex officio information with the District Court – but there was no new evidence, nothing.

“There was an email that would have been tendered in a trial in which (ICAC) wrote it was ‘imperative to get a successful prosecution’ against me.”

As the trial neared, it emerged that ICAC had failed to comply with international law by interviewing German witnesses without permission of their government.

Worse, they had been warned of their mistake by senior diplomats but did nothing to correct it.

Most damningly of all, they had known since August 2019 that cell phone towers matched Mr Hanlon’s location to the businesses he insisted he had visited.

Those same towers showed Mrs Hanlon and Millie’s phones “kilometres” away.

The cell phone evidence – only released by ICAC, to prosecution and defence, last Friday – was the final nail in the case’s coffin.

Mr Hanlon says he is relieved the case is over – and happy to have “exposed” ICAC’s practices. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

At any cost

On Wednesday, Mr Hanlon was excused from having to sit in the dock while prosecutors formally tendered no evidence against him.

A case that had spanned 50 months, cost the state $1m and the Hanlons $500,000, ended in less than 15 minutes – giving the family back their lives.

“The emotional toll has been huge, as has the financial toll,” Mr Hanlon said.

“I’m happy to have exposed them, but I know I’m not the only person that’s suffered like this … a lot of people currently before the courts are suffering the exact same way.

“This just shouldn’t have happened … these organisations are wrong, they are ‘prosecutions at any cost’, and I mean any cost – they don’t care about anything else.

“Some people have slithered away since this started – from ICAC, from politics, from the DPP – and I hope all those people are brought to account.”