Nick Kaldas: Victims of bugging scandal get letter saying sorry and so we were cops
THE NSW Crime Commission has apologised to former Deputy Police Commissioner Nick Kaldas, his family and 14 other serving and former police detectives for illegally bugging them two decades ago but puts much of the blame on the NSW police force.
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The NSW Crime Commission has apologised to former Deputy Police Commissioner Nick Kaldas, his family and 14 other serving and former police detectives for illegally bugging them — but puts much of the blame on the NSW police force.
Mr Kaldas as well as a serving superintendent, 12 former detectives and a journalist were all sent letters of apology last week by the outgoing boss of the Crime Commission Peter Hastings, QC, after an inquiry into Operation Mascot found warrants to bug more than 100 police officers from 1999 to 2001 were illegally obtained.
“While the officers of the New South Wales Police Force involved were not at the direction and control of the Crime Commission, it accepts that it had a measure of responsibility for the fact their actions occurred in the course of the Mascot investigation,’’ Mr Hastings wrote.
In a letter to Mr Kaldas he made specific reference to the fact his home where his former wife lived was bugged and has also written to her personally.
Report into the bugging of more than 100 police officers to be made public
“The Acting Ombudsman found the conduct of officers of the New South Wales Police Force in naming you in affidavits supporting the issue of listening device warrants ... in obtaining a telephone interception warrant on the telephone number of your former home where you no longer lived, was unreasonable, and recommended that the Commission apologise for that fact,’’ Mr Hastings said.
A four year inquiry into the bugging affair divided the force and exploded into a public brawl during a parliamentary inquiry into allegations the Ombudsman’s secret inquiry was biased.
It exposed a bitter rift between Mr Kaldas, deputy Catherine Burn and then police boss Andrew Scipione. It has reignited the issue which the government hoped had disappeared when Mr Kaldas resigned to join the United Nations and Commissioner Mick Fuller took over in April this year.
Mr Kaldas praised Mr Hastings for the apology s and called on the government and police force to follow suit, saying: “To date there has been no acknowledgment of the wrongdoing or any apology from the NSW Police ... nor from the NSW government.’’