An investigation by The Courier-Mail found former employees of his financial planning business tried to blow the whistle on the unscrupulous activities they allegedly witnessed at work.

Bruce McLean had been working for Mr Williams’ company, Intrinsic Financial Planning Solutions, which was a corporate agent for Suncorp, for almost a year when he made serious allegations about his boss in about May of 2002.

Detailed notes made by Mr McLean at the time reveal his allegations included Mr Williams asking him “on at least three occasions” to forge client signatures.

Mr McLean alleged Mr Williams forged the signatures himself when he refused to do it.

In one instance, he alleged he saw Mr Williams enlarge a signature on a photocopier so he could recreate it.

Mr McLean suspected his boss was allegedly forging the signatures to cut corners on his paperwork to avoid contacting clients, but could not be certain of the reason.

Some of the forgeries were on life risk applications and others related to superannuation and investment, Mr McLean wrote at the time.

SPECIAL INVESTIGATION

More reports: Labor’s man in hell of a ‘fix’

Boss was ‘a sleaze’

Drug claims and a killer twist

Employees of Mr Williams were also told not to disclose clients’ health problems or dangerous hobbies to Suncorp’s insurance underwriters, Mr McLean said.

He said this came to a head one day when he had told underwriters about a client’s off-road bike.

“When I told Williams, he ranted with fury. He told me I was never to talk to underwriting,” Mr McLean noted.

The notes also alleged Mr Williams backdated documents for same-day insurance sales to avoid cooling off periods.

Labor state secretary Evan Moorhead said that Mr Williams denied the allegations about forging signatures and backdating documents.

Another former staffer of Mr Williams, who asked not to be named, has provided The Courier-Mail a sworn statement that they too witnessed Mr Williams practising signatures on a sheet of paper.

The staff member was so concerned about Mr Williams’ financial dealings with an elderly client, Bill Rogers, that they sent complaint letters to both the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and Suncorp in 2003.

Mr Moorhead said Mr Williams was not questioned by Suncorp or ASIC on this matter.

Suncorp had a strict policy banning its advisers from having personal financial ties with their clients.

Mr Williams’ business was responsible for advising clients on financial investments and superannuation.

Documents show Suncorp picked up Mr Williams on a series of compliance issues in the company’s review of his client files in 2000, including altering dates on a letter signed by clients.

Several of the Suncorp client file reviews gave a “below expectations” rating.

Suncorp documents also confirm Mr McLean approached it with his allegations about Mr Williams, including not being properly paid, in about 2002.

Mr McLean was sacked by Mr Williams the same month after he learned of the approach.

Mr Williams later became involved in a fierce dispute with Suncorp, at one stage tying himself to a pot plant in front of its Brisbane head office as part of protest action.

The dispute culminated in Mr Williams holding a rooftop hunger strike against Suncorp in 2004, surrounded by placards claiming he had been “shafted” by the company.

He reached a confidential settlement on the fifth day of the protest.

Mr Williams later bragged publicly of receiving a seven-figure settlement and later that year went on a $1 million-plus property spending spree.

But he disagreed with advice he needed to pay tax on the full lump-sum payout from Suncorp in his 2004-05 tax return and appeared in court on a charge of failing to lodge a tax return in 2007.

His accountant Kenneth Clift told Brisbane Magistrates Court Mr Williams came to see him after a “drawn out problem” with Suncorp and that Suncorp “actually cancelled his agency.”

He said Mr Williams had health issues and wasn’t able to “handle the practice well”.

Mr Clift told the court Mr Williams’ payout from Suncorp comprised a lump-sum total and permanent disability payment, and a confidential ex-gratia payment of close to $230,000. He told the court that Mr Williams did not accept his advice about paying tax on the lump-sum payment and was “quite uptight about it,” leading them to remove him from their client list.

“He still had issues with Suncorp. He felt he was being poorly treated by them,” he told the court.

A magistrate ultimately dismissed the charge on the grounds Mr Williams was suffering a mental illness.

Mr Moorhead said Mr Williams was “unwell at the time but is now in good health”.

During an unrelated dispute with a Cairns law firm two years later, Mr Williams spoke about teaching Suncorp a lesson.

In an interview with the law firm, which he agreed to be recorded, Mr Williams told of “jumping off the roof every night and going home sleeping in me (sic) bed and getting back up there at four o’clock in the morning”.

“You don’t go into these things to die, you go into these things because some bastard needs to be taught a lesson,” he said. “And they paid me in the vicinity of probably a bit over $200,000 a day to sit on the roof.”

Suncorp declined to comment. Mr McLean went on to work for another Suncorp corporate agent. He later had a dispute with Suncorp and was required to hand over all of his documents about his and others’ dealings with the company as part of a confidential agreement in 2006. He said this included documents about Mr Williams.

DESPERATE ELDERLY BATTLER’S ‘FIGHT’ TO GET MONEY MAN TO PAY

BILL Rogers was struggling to find enough cash for food when he sought help to recover money he thought was owed to him by his financial planner Rick Williams, according to his close friends.

Mr Rogers spent his life working in the railways in Ipswich and was in the midst of an acrimonious split with his wife when he lent more than $20,000 to Mr Williams in 1997.

The money was allegedly for a property beside Mr William’s house at Bellbird Park, which Mr Williams later subdivided and sold. Mr Rogers believed he was to receive his money back plus interest.

But friends say he was forced to fight for years for the money, while barely scraping by himself. One friend was concerned that he was so hard up he resorted to eating dog food to survive.

Mr Rogers’ involvement with Mr Williams extended to granting him power of attorney in 1998 and in 2001 Mr Williams also became part-owner with Mr Rogers in a North Ipswich house. Labor state secretary Evan Moorhead said Mr Rogers was a long-time family friend and Mr Williams sought permission from Suncorp to hold a power of attorney for him. He said he did not have a beneficial interest in Mr Rogers’ property.

The property was sold to Mr Rogers by a couple, Patricia and David Auld. Mr Auld said he recalled Mr Williams was a financial planner to both himself and Mr Rogers.

He said the house was sold to Mr Rogers and he had “no clue” why Mr Williams was named as a part owner.

Records show Mr Rogers was a client of Mr Williams’ in 2000, when his firm was a corporate agency for Suncorp, but is said to have received earlier advice.

Multiple sources say Mr Rogers also wrote Mr Williams into his will.

Suncorp had policies banning its advisers from taking loans, cash or property from clients and acting under power of attorney for clients.

As late as 2003, Mr Rogers was still struggling to recover about $6000, records reveal.

His estranged son recalls his father talking of his struggles to get money from Williams. Family friend Brett Elliott said Mr Rogers had asked his father, a longtime fishing friend, for advice and was told to write Mr Williams out of the will and move on.

Friends say Mr Rogers sought legal advice and sent a letter of demand for the money. Land title documents show the property was transferred out of Mr Williams name in late 2003 several months after Mr Rogers made his last will, in which Mr Williams did not feature. Mr Rogers died aged 75 in 2006.

RICK’S ‘THICK SKIN’ A WINNER FOR ALP

RICK Williams’ political ambitions stretch back to the early ’90s when he tried to unseat long-time Labor councillor Paul Tully in Ipswich.

It was a fiercely fought election campaign in which a raft of newcomers challenged the Labor-dominated council.

But while other Labor councillors were toppled at the election Mr Tully held on to become the party’s longest serving councillor in Queensland.

Mr Williams tried again in 2000, running against sitting independent Fran Bloom.

Locals remember it as a particularly vicious campaign in which attack ads were run against Ms Bloom.

One brochure, according to a long-term resident, showed pot holes all over the city and contrasted it with a picture of Ms Bloom’s street and a comment that there was no such problem there.

Ultimately, Mr Williams secured the most votes but lost on preferences to a separate candidate.

After the loss, his attention was focused on running his financial planning business at Goodna as a corporate agent for Suncorp.

Mr Williams took to his roof for a hunger strike in protest against Suncorp.

He would later talk about having the support during the rooftop protest of local state member Jo-Ann Miller, who is now the Police Minister.

Mr Williams once told how Ms Miller, who he had helped on political campaigns, would send an ambulance out each day to check on him.

“They would call on me, take my vital signs,” he said in a recorded meeting with a Cairns law firm he was picketing.

In the same recording he spoke of his political strategy, saying if he made an enemy in politics he would throw money at their opponents.

“I will spend $100,000 if I have to put someone in as mayor next time around,” he said.

“I wouldn’t buy an election mate — I would just put the money behind it. Do the donation and sink the mongrel.”

Mr Williams bought a canal-front home on Bribie Island in 2009 and set his sights on a spot on the Moreton Bay Regional Council.

He unsuccessfully ran for the council in 2012 under the slogan “Will Do Williams”.

Mr Williams was by then running a local tow truck business, which would spark a nasty neighbourhood feud over objections to his trucks being parked in his quiet island cul-de-sac.

He dusted himself off after the 2012 election loss and set his sights on an even bigger target — toppling first-term LNP MP for Pumicestone Lisa France.

A challenge that ultimately succeeded.

One Labor colleague told The Courier-Mail Mr Williams’ greatest attribute was his “thick skin”.