Derrick Belan: Former union boss released on bail to appeal jail sentence
Despite not being eligible for parole until 2021, a former union boss was released from prison late last year to appeal a four-year sentence for misusing hundreds of thousands of dollars of members’ funds.
Central Sydney
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He was the union boss sentenced to a minimum three years in prison for spending more than $650,000 of members’ money on tattoos, botox, cruises, cars and a motorcycle.
But Derrick Belan was quietly granted bail to appeal his sentence late last year after posting a $250,000 security, just halfway through the term of punishment handed down in June 2018.
The former secretary of the National Union of Workers was convicted in March 2018 of 60 charges including dishonestly obtaining financial advantage and participating in a criminal group.
Three months later on June 18 Magistrate Elizabeth Ellis sentenced him to four years jail for instigating a “matrix of fraud” by passing off use of the union’s credit card through fake invoices between 2010 and 2015.
She told Parramatta Local Court Belan had pilfered the “scant funds” of union members on the “lower end” of the wage spectrum, driven by his “personal greed … and a childish desire for trinkets”.
Despite not being eligible for parole until March 2021, the 49-year-old was released after a successful bail application at the Supreme Court on September 9 last year, a spokeswoman confirmed.
He was released on September 25 to live at a home in Sydney’s northwest, with his conditions ordering him to be of good behaviour and report to Windsor police twice per week via phone calls.
The appeal will be heard in the District Court on July 20. He originally pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Alongside the luxury items he was found to have bought with hardworking members’ cash, Belan also had a large tattoo of his parents inked on his right leg using their funds.
His conduction was brought to light during the explosive royal commission into trade unions in 2015, and he was charged by police the following year.
In court Belan had attempted to blame the spending on his niece Danielle O’Brien, a former union bookkeeper, who admitted to spending $260,000 of union money of clothes and family trips to Dreamworld and Sea World.
He stepped down as the union’s boss before fronting the royal commission in 2015, having led the organisation for 10 years.
Belan’s late father Frank also led the organisation, previously called the Storeman and Packers Union, for many years.