Daryl Maguire ICAC hearing: third man given cash for fake Chinese workers
Another Wagga Wagga businessman allegedly took tens of thousands of dollars in cash from a visa agent for Chinese employees who never arrived, the corruption watchdog has heard.
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A third Wagga Wagga businessman has told the corruption watchdog he was given wads of cash to sponsor Chinese workers that never turned up after a then-Liberal MP introduced him to a visa agent.
Furniture salesman Peter Wood told the Independent Commission Against Corruption he travelled to China with his longtime mate Daryl Maguire once before Maguire became a politician and once while he was in office.
Mr Wood became the third businessman to tell the ICAC Maguire introduced him to a woman named Maggie Wang who could recruit Chinese nationals to work in his business.
Mr Wood said Maguire told him there’d be an incentive of some kind for the business and he met Ms Wang in early 2013.
“She came and saw us, she explained a few things, as soon as I heard the government was involved.. I thought this sounds okay,” he said.
Mr Wood said he learned there was a $30,000 payment for his business if he participated in helping the workers secure the visa.
The commission, earlier this week, heard from two other Wagga businessmen who said they’d been offered a $30,000 or $50,000 “training fee” to formally employ Chinese visa seekers who never turned up.
The ICAC heard Ms Wang allegedly paid those men in bundles of cash in envelopes or from her jacket pockets.
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Mr Wood made similar claims saying the furniture business set up an office for a Chinese worker organised by Ms Wang but he never arrived.
The salesman visited Ms Wang’s office in mid-2014 and allegedly was handed $30,000 in cash. He flew back to Wagga and put it through his business, declaring it as income and paying GST he said.
The commission, on Thursday, heard another businessman Angus McLaren and Ms Wang met in Sydney’s upscale Double Bay in March 2014.
Mr McLaren’s worker never turned up either but, the commission heard, Ms Wang handed over tens of thousands of dollars in envelopes.
The real estate agent and farmer began to become suspicious and called Mr Maguire for reassurance, he said.
“I said what’s going on here - we’re getting paid in cash,” Mr McLaren told the ICAC.
“(Maguire) said ‘I don’t want to know about it’ and changed the subject.
Mr McLaren told the ICAC he was certain, in hindsight, he had been sucked in to a scam.
Mr Wood, on Friday, said he’d lost sleep in recent nights reflecting on how “dubious” the scheme actually was.
He thanked the ICAC for “opening my eyes”.
The commission returns next week.
Maguire’s mate sucked farmer into ‘visa-for-cash scam’, ICAC told
A rural NSW businessman has told the corruption watchdog he was sucked in to a “dead set” immigration scam that began when a contact of local MP Daryl Maguire offered envelopes of cash to buy visas for Chinese migrants who never turned up.
It comes after the Independent Commission Against Corruption alleged Maguire accepted cash from the migration agent while in his parliamentary office as part of the scheme.
Wagga Wagga real estate agent and farmer Angus McLaren told the Independent Commission Against Corruption his local politician introduced him to a woman called Maggie Wang in early 2014.
Mr Maguire allegedly told the businessman some vague details about an immigration scheme that could help his businesses by sourcing qualified Chinese nationals.
The commission heard Mr McLaren and Ms Wang met in Sydney’s upscale Double Bay in March that year.
Ms Wang allegedly explained the scheme would come at no cost to Mr McLaren’s business — in fact it came with a kickback.
“She would have explained it to me as a scheme that put Chinese nationals looking for visas into our business for three months,” he told the ICAC on Thursday.
The Chinese workers would have their wages and superannuation paid for and the kickback would be $30,000 for each successful applicant, the ICAC heard.
Mr McLaren said he did not do much research into the scheme but knew it was about filling positions in the regions that could not be filled by Australians and would need to be filled by qualified foreign migrants.
One of the highly qualified migrants, allegedly sourced by Ms Wang’s migration agency, was a man named Steven Tu who flew from China to meet Mr McLaren on one occasion.
But Mr Tu never returned to Wagga to work for Mr McLaren’s business, he told the commission.
The pair met up on a trip to China on another occasion but, despite Mr Tu’s formal “employment” with Mr McLaren’s business, he was effectively unaccounted for.
Mr McLaren “fully expected” his worker to turn up, he said, but even when he contacted Mr Tu in China and asked him to help set up a beef export business nothing eventuated.
The commission heard instead that Ms Wang, on multiple occasions, would hand Mr McLaren envelopes of cash containing tens of thousands of dollars.
The businessman began to become suspicious and called Mr Maguire for reassurance, he said.
“I said what’s going on here — we’re getting paid in cash,” Mr McLaren told the ICAC.
“(Maguire) said ‘I don’t want to know about it’ and changed the subject.
Mr McLaren said Maguire had “shushed” him and his suspicions grew.
“You’ve been introduced to this person (Ms Wang) by a Member of Parliament and, naively, you thought it was a legitimate scheme,” he said. “But when the cash started turning up I realised it wasn’t.”
He eventually concluded it was a “dead set” scam.
“I didn’t have an epiphany that this was a scam, it was a gradual realisation that we were being sucked into something,” he said.
“But at that stage I thought we’d already crossed the Rubicon so what do you do?”
Counsel Assisting the Commission Scott Robertson, on Monday, told the ICAC Maguire admitted he took money from Ms Wang while in his parliamentary office.
“In a compulsory examination, Mr Maguire accepted that on more than one occasion he received cash from Ms Wang in relation to immigration placements that he had facilitated,” Mr Robertson said.
Some of the cash was allegedly passed on to his hidden business partner, and some wasn’t, he added.
Another businessman, electrician Shaun Duffy, told the commission he was also involved in a similar scheme with Ms Wang.
He alleged Ms Wang met him at Wagga with cash “stuffed in every pocket” of a big jacket as payment for his involvement.
When asked by the ICAC if he felt uncomfortable when she revealed the $48,000 in her clothing he chuckled. “Yes,” he said.
All up he had received $50,000 from Ms Wang for “training” fees but the employee had not shown up, he said..
He conceded a visa application to employ a senior management accountant, a position his company didn’t need, was for an “exorbitant” $190,000 salary.
The eye-watering salary, he said, would have been no skin off his nose as he would not have had to pay it.
The commission heard the wages would have been reimbursed as part of the scheme.
Mr Duffy said he signed misleading visa documents believing they would be submitted to Australian immigration authorities.
He said he was unaware Maguire, his friend, was involved in facilitating the scheme, as the ICAC alleges.
“I knew Daryl (Maguire) and Maggie were friends, but I didn’t really know Daryl was involved in this,” Mr Duffy said.
The inquiry continues.
Tuesday, September 23: Co-worker ordered to give up hard drive
A senior NSW Government staffer has been marched to Parliament House by ICAC investigators to surrender a hard drive belonging to former Liberal MP Daryl Maguire.
It comes after she told the corruption watchdog she helped her old boss silently operate a private business while on parliamentary time and even took money from the company.
Rebecca Cartwright, secretary to the government Whip, worked with the Wagga Wagga MP when he held the position from 2011 to 2014.
She told the Independent Commission Against Corruption Maguire had told her a hard drive was coming from his parliamentary computer, via the IT department after he became embroiled in an investigation in 2018.
He told her to get the hard drive and post it in a way that makes it sure “it gets lost in the post” she told the ICAC.
“Mr Maguire was making it clear to you he wanted the hard drive to disappear,” Counsel Assisting the Commission Scott Robertson said on Wednesday.
“Yes,” she said.
Ms Cartwright was asked why she hadn’t offered the information before.
“You know that hard drive might have information on it that might implicate Mr Maguire,” Mr Robertson said.
“It might have, yes,” she said.
Mr Robertson said she had helped Maguire conceal potentially damaging material from the ICAC.
“I just put it away,” she said.
The ICAC ordered officers usher Ms Cartwright into Parliament through a side entrance with the assistance of Speaker Jonathan O’Dea, moments before question time began.
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Labor Leader Jodi McKay asked the Premier about the evidence while ICAC officers were working to retrieve the harddrive next door.
“As is appropriate, the ICAC is conducting its investigations, let’s allow the ICAC to do it’s work,” Gladys Berejiklian said.
The Labor Leader later accused the government of hiding the existence of the hard drive.
“How is it possible that information related to a corruption inquiry has been hidden in the government whip’s office and no one knew about it?” Ms McKay said.
“Someone had to have known that that information was hidden in the whip’s office”
“It is an unprecedented occurrence to have ICAC raid the New South Wales parliament,” Ms McKay said
The staffer remained stony faced and silent as she left the parliament on Sydney’s Macquarie Street before a barrage of news cameras.
She later told the ICAC she didn’t destroy the hard drive because it was parliamentary property and “Daryl didn’t seem in the right state of mind” when he asked her to “lose” it.
“My understanding was not that he wanted it destroyed but that he didn’t want it,” she said.
“He didn’t want it sent to his house.”
The contents of the hard drive are still unknown as ICAC and the parliament work to figure out if the watchdog has legal grounds to inspect the files inside.
The dramatic scene came after Ms Cartwirght told the ICAC knew Maguire was close friends with Phil Elliott who ran a business known as G8wayinternational.
But Mr Robertson alleged she knew Maguire was also intimately involved in G8way and was hoping to profit from it.
Ms Cartwright repeatedly said she was helping Maguire around the parliamentary office - but Mr Robertson alleged she knew she was helping G8way.
He ran the staffer through a list of times, the ICAC alleges, Ms Cartwright also helped the MPs private business while working for the parliament.
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He asked if she accepted she’d helped G8way while on parliamentary time.
“I don’t recall but I believe I would have printed something,” she said.
“It’s more than just printing. On multiple occasions you have been involved in various activities to benefit the private business interest of Mr Maguire and G8way,” Mr Robertson said.
“Yes,” she responded.
She recalled printing labels for wine bottles at Maguire’s request.
The ICAC previously heard G8way made barely any money but did receive a commission after brokering the sale of Australian wine to China.
Ms Cartwright remembered a meeting between then-NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell, Maguire and members of a Chinese trade delegation.
She said she took pictures of a courtesy call between the premier and the delegation and the ICAC ordered her to hand them over to investigators on Wednesday.
She described taking passports to the Chinese embassy in Sydney on behalf of Mr Elliott for an upcoming trip - she paid a fee and was reimbursed “a larger figure” by G8way.
On another occasion, she said, Maguire loaned her $2500 of G8way funds to pay off a debt.
She never paid it back.
On a third occasion, she said, Maguire gave her $500 to fly to Perth so she could visit a girlfriend with cancer.
“I’ve seen the documents, it looks like he’s running a business on the side, but I didn’t see it as running a business on the side,” she said.
The ICAC heard Ms Cartwright “didn’t put two and two together” at the time.
Maguire’s former staffer said she’d had scant contact with her former boss since he stepped down in 2018 but he had reached out when his career began to crumble.
“He was angry at ICAC,” she said.
“He was angry he wasn’t going to be a Liberal or anything.”
She later told the commission Maguire was upset a National Party member may have been nominated for his seat once he was forced to stand down.
The seat was ultimately snatched up by independent Joe McGirr.