Chinese waitress surrenders phone, files after making secret call during ICAC inquiry
A Chinese waitress caught in ICAC’s toilets ringing a relative to hide a crucial document was forced to return to her home on Friday with corruption investigators to hand over the files.
NSW
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A Chinese waitress caught in ICAC’s toilets ringing a relative to hide a crucial document was forced to return to her home on Friday with corruption investigators and hand over the files.
In an extraordinary move after the Friday hearing had finished, the corruption watchdog recalled Emperor’s Garden staffer Patricia Siu, 54, to the witness box and revealed she’d made the secret call during a tea break.
Her mobile phone was then confiscated by ICAC and she was sternly warned about “interfering” and “impeding” the inquiry.
Earlier in the day ICAC chief commissioner Peter Hall, SC, ordered she produce the document, a NSW Electoral Commission letter with handwritten notes made by her restaurant owner boss Jonathan Yee on how to give false evidence.
Counsel assisting Scott Robertson told the public hearing “it’s obvious from the evidence that’s just emerged that the witness sought to thwart that order”.
ICAC heard she went into the women’s toilet cubicles in the Elizabeth Street ICAC building in Sydney’s CBD and rang her brother-in-law Harman Wong and spoke to him in Cantonese.
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ICAC: Waitress surrenders phone after secret calls
“Help me — go to my desk and next to the desk there are two pink folders,” Ms Siu told him. “Help me hide them.
“I will be back in about half an hour.”
Instead ICAC put her back in the witness box and she was grilled for another hour, then investigators accompanied her to her Bexley home in Sydney’s south to retrieve the document.
Late Friday afternoon an ICAC investigator left her home holding the pink folders, accompanied by her solicitor Mark Hodges.
Ms Siu said she made the call to protect her boss, Mr Yee, who she “trusted” and had originally asked her to make the phony electoral declaration forms in 2015.
“I don’t want Jonathan Yee to have so many crimes or offences,” she said.
Mr Hall warned her before she returned home that: “You are not permitted to remove or in any way interfere with the documents or … the two folders before handing them over to an officer of this commission.”
Ms Siu is one of several “straw donors” allegedly used by the NSW Labor Party to cover up a $100,000 cash donation.
Ms Siu had claimed to make a $10,000 donation to the ALP in 2015, when she was on a $44,000 salary, using a story allegedly concocted by Mr Yee about the money coming from tips, “Chinese lucky money” and unused travel money.
ICAC also heard details that former Labor Party MP Ernest Wong held a secret meeting with Ms Siu just a few weeks ago, after she received a summons to appear at ICAC.
Mr Wong, who lost office earlier this year, frequently ate at the Emperor’s Garden restaurant and met her in the private room upstairs, allegedly “insisting” she stick with her original “false evidence”.
Ms Siu said she also gave Mr Wong, now a practising lawyer, her only physical copy of a handwritten letter where she had written out the details of the false story.
“What he (Mr Wong) meant was, at the public hearing, I must insist to say the money was donated out of my own money,” she said. “He did say a lot about himself and the good deeds he had done before.”
Ms Siu was asked why she was now telling the truth.
“Because you have evidence to prove the crime in relation to the donation,” Ms Siu said.
She said she found out a week ago her boss Mr Yee was intending to now tell the truth to the commission when he appears next week.
“You realised in light of that you couldn’t get away with lying anymore?” Mr Robertson asked. “Yes,” she said.
The hearing continues next week.