The Liberal candidate, the mysterious $60,000 and the deleted podcast

Eighteen days before the state election in March 2019, Liberal hopeful Scott Yung hosted a fundraiser at the high-class Blue Angel seafood restaurant to help support his run at Chris Minns’ seat of Kogarah. The list for the dinner was tight, with only about two dozen Chinese Australians and party figures attending to rub shoulders with former prime minister John Howard.

The evening was a roaring success, according to the candidate nomination form Yung submitted to the Liberal Party in 2023 ahead of being nominated as the candidate for Bennelong.

Scott Yung, then the Liberal candidate for the state seat of Kogarah, sitting next to John Howard during a fundraiser at the Blue Angel restaurant.

“We raised the maximum expenditure of $60,000 within one week. This was thanks to the assistance of Mr John Howard hosting a dinner,” Yung stated.

The problem? None of these donations appear to have been disclosed with the NSW Electoral Commission. The Liberal Party’s disclosures for the state campaign period do not include a single person identified by the Herald as having attended the fundraiser.

In response to the Herald’s questions, Yung said: “When filling out party forms I incorrectly recalled the details of a fundraising event from six years ago. It was not a ticketed event, and had raised less than I had recalled at the time I was completing my paperwork. I had since corrected the record with the party.”

He did not specify how much he actually raised and if and how these donations had been disclosed.

The revelation he misinformed the party of his fundraising prowess comes at a bad time for Yung as he tries to retake the seat. Yung is considered the front-runner after a redistribution made the seat notionally Liberal, but his work ethic has concerned some party insiders, and Labor figures are quietly optimistic about holding on.

The only donation linked to the event is a $3000 non-monetary contribution from the Blue Angel restaurant made out to the Kogarah state electorate conference, a spokeswoman for the NSW Electoral Commission confirmed.

“The published candidate disclosure for the 2018/19 disclosure period does not include any donation received by the candidate,” she said.

In response to several questions, a spokesman for the Liberal Party said: “The NSW Liberal Party has fully complied with all of our electoral funding obligations, and declared donations to the NSW Electoral Commission in line with those obligations.”

Some in attendance at the fundraiser may have also been banned donors.

Photos taken on the night show Nugroho Soesanto, director of real estate firm Sydney Property Realty and who formerly worked for major developer Crown Group, was there. So was Howin Chui, who was employed by Castle Group, a residential developer.

Under NSW Electoral laws, close associates of property developers are prohibited from making donations, meaning Chui might have qualified as a banned donor.

Just weeks before the Blue Angel fundraiser, Chui was listed as a representative for the company who was sponsoring an event for the Way In Network, an organisation to support migrant women. In July 2018, Chui also attended a fundraiser for the Liberal Party Chinese Youth Council alongside Castle Group founder and director Ritchie Perera. A Facebook post from Chui at the time says the property developer donated “sponsored items”.

Web archives show he was employed as channel sales director of property developer Castle Group until at least late 2024.

Contacted by the Herald, Chui said he could not remember much about the Blue Angel fundraiser but denied donating to Yung’s campaign, saying he attended as the plus-one of an associate whom he declined to name.

“I showed off a little on my social media posts, but I’m sure I never donated or sponsored anything for Scott or the Liberal Party for Castle Group. I did win a prize in an auction at one of his events,” he said later via email.

Likewise, Soesanto, who worked for major residential property developer Crown Group as far back as 2013, maintains close ties with the company chief executive Iwan Sunito. A post on Instagram shows the pair spending New Year’s Eve together in 2019.

Soesanto was contacted for comment.

A Liberal Party spokesman said neither Soesanto nor Chui had “made any state donations”.

Then-treasurer Dominic Perrottet with the NSW candidate for Kogarah Scott Yung just days before the 2019 NSW election.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Two years after the Blue Angel dinner, Yung appeared on the podcast of Johnny Yap, a martial arts fighter and one-time United Australia candidate. Asked about the mechanics of campaign fundraising, Yung describes the private event with Howard as being attended by “20-25 people”.

“Fundraising is always very interesting because it gets so much negative publicity. But one of the things that we did was just host a private dinner. So we hosted a private dinner and John Howard was able to attend as my special guest,” he said.

Halfway through his response, Yung is cut off by Yap who says: “Let’s just pause for a sec because I can see one of your staff members needs you”. When they return, the pair move on from fundraising and don’t discuss the topic again.

In March 2024, six months after Yung was preselected as the Bennelong candidate, the episode was scrubbed from several podcast platforms, including Spotify, Apple and YouTube, with the latter link set to private.

Yap did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Liberal types were also spotted throughout the Blue Angel dinner at Darlinghurst.

Current Sutherland Shire Council member Haris Strangas attended, as did then Georges River Council deputy mayor Sam Elmir, who subsequently left the Liberal party, and John Caputo, a real estate agent and former prime minister Tony Abbott’s confidant and money man for a period.

Contacted by the Herald about the Blue Angel dinner, Caputo texted back: “I don’t have any information on it.”

Caputo made headlines in 2014 after he appeared at the Independent Commission Against Corruption. The investigation probed thousands of dollars he gave to former state energy minister Chris Hartcher via an alleged slush fund.

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