A part-owner of a small Sydney line marking company has told an anti-corruption inquiry he handed over envelopes of cash at an Oporto fast-food restaurant and his Wetherill Park offices to an allegedly corrupt NSW transport department employee during work on the city’s M4 motorway.
Emails, text messages and spreadsheets between 2013 and 2015 shown to the inquiry reveal that Complete Linemarking director Peco “Peter” Jankulovski and Ibrahim Helmy, who was at that time an employee of Roads and Maritime Services (RMS), arranged to meet on numerous occasions at the back of an Oporto restaurant and the company’s premises, where cash would be handed over.
Complete Linemarking director Peco Jankulovski at the ICAC hearing.
In one exchange via text message in August 2013, Helmy asked Jankulovski if there were many people at his company’s premises.
Jankulovski confirmed to the inquiry on Thursday that Helmy was expressing a reluctance to meet there too often because it was where cash was handed over. Some of the withdrawals of cash for Helmy were made from the personal bank accounts of Jankulovski and his wife.
In one example of the cash handed over, the inquiry was shown a screenshot of an image Helmy sent to Jankulovski via text message showing three envelopes, some of which were stuffed with $50 notes. Each of the envelopes had figures written on them, which Jankulovski confirmed was his handwriting.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption is investigating allegations Helmy was the mastermind behind corrupt relationships with companies, including Complete Linemarking, that were paid at least $343 million in contracts by Transport for NSW. Helmy, 38, failed to appear before the ICAC in May and police have a warrant out for his arrest.
Cash and gold bullion were among the items seized from Ibrahim Helmy’s house.Credit: Aresna Villanueva
Helmy is alleged to have pocketed $11.5 million in kickbacks – including bundles of cash, gold bullion and cryptocurrency – over a 15-year period from contractors in return for them being awarded work on roads.
The inquiry heard that as part of Complete Linemarking’s arrangement with Helmy, which began in 2012, Jankulovski would send the then-RMS employee a breakdown of his company’s costings.
Helmy would respond by sending back revised figures to Jankulovski with instructions to invoice them to the roads agency. Another method was to falsely increase the quantities of materials, rather than inflating the cost of the work.
Jankulovski confirmed that the inflated amounts would be split between Helmy and his company, which resulted in them becoming a kickback to Helmy.
Asked how the split of the inflated prices was decided, Jankulovski said: “To the best of my recollection, he was the one who said how this was going to happen.”
In an email exchange in June 2013, Jankulovski told Helmy: “Please don’t go too much on these jobs as I still don’t know how we are going to get the funds out.”
Questioned about what he meant, Jankulovski told the hearing: “I didn’t want him to go overboard on him inflating every single thing. I didn’t want this to go like this.”
He conceded that he was concerned that their arrangement was improper and that it involved corruption. Despite this, he did not make inquiries about reporting it to the department, saying he “wasn’t aware” of the means by which to do so.
About $12 million worth of work is alleged to have been awarded to Complete Linemarking between late 2012 and mid-2025 in return for Helmy receiving significant cash kickbacks from the company.
On Wednesday, Jankulovski told the inquiry he met Helmy in person up to 10 times. At one of the early meetings, the Complete Linemarking director said Helmy told him he could “help you do things” in terms of adjusting invoices which the latter could approve.
“He basically told us what to put down,” Jankulovski said.
The inquiry has previously heard that ICAC expects evidence will establish that suspected corrupt conduct started in late 2012 when Helmy developed a corrupt relationship with Complete Linemarking. At that time, Helmy was a project engineer with some responsibility for works being carried out on the M4 motorway.
The public inquiry is part of an ICAC investigation known as Operation Wyvern, which has already resulted in raids on Helmy’s premises and those who are alleged to have paid him kickbacks.
Last September, the NSW Crime Commission seized gold bullion bars and nuggets and $12,317 in cash from Helmy’s home, as well as a Maserati, $413,000 worth of cryptocurrency held by him and the equivalent of $8 million in cryptocurrency in a Binance account in the name of his sister.
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