Senior education official under investigation by IBAC destroyed evidence, inquiry hears

AN Education Department bureaucrat was sacked after he told a corruption inquiry that he destroyed evidence in a panic after learning he was being investigated.

AN Education Department bureaucrat was sacked after he told a corruption inquiry that he destroyed evidence in a panic after learning he was being investigated.

And a school principal was stood down while his role in the purchase of $30,000 worth of wine, for which his school was invoiced, is investigated.

The wine was bought from Peter Paul’s son’s company.

The Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission heard on Wednesday that John Allman, the department’s south-eastern regional director, had been captured on secret audio recordings and surveillance discussing the use of “banker schools” to secretly channel department funds.

The hearing was told Mr Allman had arranged for Silverton Primary School to become one of these “banker schools”.

Mr Allman told IBAC that over a number of years, at his request, then department finance boss Nino Napoli transferred “several hundred thousand” to Silverton from the student resource budget.

“It was common practice,” he said.

Banker schools like Silverton benefited from interest payments.

Mr Allman kept Silverton records at his house. IBAC officers searched his home in 2014 but failed to find them.

He said that after they left, in “rage, upset and trauma” he destroyed the documents.

“I went into somewhat of a panic after eight IBAC officers visited my house,” he said.

He ripped up the papers, put them in a plastic shopping bag and threw them in a bin at Bunnings just hours after the search took place.

Three secretly recorded conversations between Mr Allman and Mr Napoli were played at the hearing.

In them, the pair discussed the IBAC investigation and Mr Allman’s concerns that the commission would look into the practices at Silverton.

Mr Napoli could be heard telling Mr Allman that he had misled IBAC officers.

The hearing was also told that Mr Napoli had secured his son, Raffaelle (Raff) Napoli, a job at Essendon North Primary School.

Raff Napoli, 30, received $75,000 in payments from a company called On the Ball Personnel from 2007-2011, supposedly for school wages and superannuation.

But Raff Napoli told the hearing that he had never worked at the school and did not know what the payments were for.

He said that his father and former Essendon North Primary School principal Michael Giulieri had both asked him to “tell little porkies” and inform IBAC that he had worked at the school.

Raff Napoli said his father had told him that somebody owed him money and he was fortunate to have a father who looked after him.

But he did not agree with lying to IBAC, he said.

Counsel assisting IBAC, Ian Hill, QC, said that over seven years Raff Napoli’s bank accounts received a total of $120,000 from On the Ball, a company that was owned by Mr Napoli’s former sister-law, Sharon Vandermeer.

Raff Napoli said he had withdrawn the money from ATM machines, and could not account for it.

Nino Napoli, who was sacked earlier this week, has been accused of using Education Department funds to benefit himself and relatives by $2.5 million.

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