A secret phone conversation has been played to an inquiry in which an allegedly corrupt Transport for NSW official urged a contractor not to walk away from an arrangement whereby he received kickbacks for helping to facilitate work.
During the 18-minute conversation with the contractor, then-Transport for NSW manager Ibrahim Helmy is recorded as saying that the arrangement was “not risky at all”, although he conceded that “I guess it’s not 100 per cent legal”.
“I’m giving you work, and you’re making my life easier to keep giving you work,” Helmy said in the recording played to the Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry on Thursday.
Direct Traffic operations manager Adam Spilsted appeared at ICAC on Thursday.Credit: ICAC
The conversation was with Direct Traffic director Mechelina “Louisa” Van Der Ende-Plakke, who had phoned Helmy in June 2021 following a meeting at which the Transport for NSW manager is alleged to have sought hundreds of thousands of dollars from her company.
She is heard telling Helmy in the recording that “it’s not right” and that “this is going too far”, adding that “if we would go ahead with this, and it would ever come out, it would not look good”. She said she did not want to take the risk.
The recording was played late on Thursday after Van Der Ende-Plakke’s husband Adam Spilsted, who is Direct Traffic’s operations manager, told the inquiry he had gone behind his wife’s back to initially make gift card payments totalling about $4000 to Helmy, before later taking money the couple made from gambling winnings and making cash withdrawals from banks to pay him.
Cash and gold bullion were among the items seized from Ibrahim Helmy’s house.Credit: Aresna Villanueva
“After the first few gift cards [Helmy] said that was not enough money – he wanted more money. His words were: ‘the gift cards aren’t cutting it’,” Spilsted told the inquiry.
Spilsted, who broke down at one stage during questioning on Thursday, said Helmy showed him a spreadsheet in March 2021 that showed Direct Traffic owed between $300,000 and $600,000.
He said his wife was upset and “pretty shocked” when she learnt of the amount Helmy was seeking, and later said she was going to phone him and dob him into Transport for NSW.
Spilsted also told the hearing that his wife had earlier been “dead against” paying cash to Helmy but that he did not want the company to lose work. He said Helmy had threatened that the company “won’t have any work at all”.
The ICAC is investigating allegations Helmy was the mastermind behind corrupt relationships with nine companies, including Direct Traffic, that were paid at least $343 million in contracts by Transport for NSW.
Helmy, 38, is alleged to have pocketed $11.5 million in kickbacks – including bundles of cash, gold bullion and cryptocurrency – over 15 years from contractors, in return for them being awarded work. He failed to appear before the ICAC in May and police have a warrant out for his arrest.
It is alleged that Direct Traffic was awarded about $48 million of work from September 2018 to June this year as a result of corrupt dealings with Helmy.
The inquiry has also heard allegations that Southern Pavement Services, which traded as Twin City, was awarded about $20 million of work by Transport for NSW from October 2021 to June this year, in return for Helmy pocketing cash kickbacks.
Twin City director Samuel Hodson recalled to the inquiry on Thursday how, during a conference call in late 2022 with his two other directors and Helmy, it was conveyed to the then-Transport for NSW manager that their arrangement had “gotten out of control”.
Twin City director Samuel Hodson appears on Thursday before the ICAC’s public inquiry.Credit:
The conference call was held before a second cash payment was made to Helmy in early 2023, and Hodson said they voiced to him during the conversation that they believed the arrangement should come to an end.
“He wasn’t accepting of the fact that it would be stopped. It was implied we were already in pretty deep,” Hodson said.
At that point Hodson confirmed that their company owed Helmy about $200,000 in cash, based on him receiving a share of the profit from inflated invoices for work with Transport for NSW.
Hodson said he was aware that his own personal cash reserve of $220,000 was close to becoming exhausted. He recalled fellow director Nathan Ellwood turning up at his home to collect money for Helmy, during which the pair counted the cash to confirm it totalled $220,000. It was later handed to Helmy at Marulan in the Southern Highlands.
Following that, Hodson said his cash reserves were depleted, and the fact the company had no more actual cash after the second payment was communicated to Helmy. Later, Helmy is alleged to have suggested to a Twin City director that the company make payments via cryptocurrency transactions.
Hodson said his concern was that any cryptocurrency transactions would be traceable and that that option was not pursued. He recounted how another option to obtain cash to pay Helmy was for the company to accept approaches from private companies that offered cash for work by Twin City.
Under questioning from ICAC counsel assisting Rob Ranken, SC, Hodson accepted that Twin City was getting work from Transport for NSW based on inflated quotes as a result of kickbacks the company paid to Helmy.
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