Court files reveal untested bribery and fraud allegations against A-League owner Tony Sage

Details of a decade-long AFP investigation into the Perth Glory owner and his associates have been laid bare in search warrants and other Federal Court documents.

Tony Sage has been accused of bribery and fruad, court document reveal.

Federal Police have accused the millionaire owner of an A League soccer team of bribing an official in Sierra Leone over an iron ore project as part of a decade-long investigation into the mining magnate and his associates, court documents reveal.

The documents were lodged with the Federal Court as part of a dispute between Perth Glory owner Tony Sage and the AFP that has been running since 2013 and centres on material seized during a series of raids.

They reveal details of one of the AFP’s longest-running investigations, Operation Lemans, which is probing Mr Sage and some of his business associates.

The court released the files to News Corp last month.

They include search warrants and police affidavits and were relied on by the court in a 2021 ruling that resolved many of the issues in the long-running legal stoush, which is about whether the AFP can use some of the tens of thousands of documents scooped up in the raids.

Mr Sage and two other people named in the warrants, business associate Timothy Turner and corporate adviser Lui Guiliani, have not been charged with any offences and there is no suggestion they have engaged in any wrongdoing.

The Perth Glory owner is a big fish in the small pond of Perth, where he has owned the city’s only soccer team since 2009 as well as doing stints running a nightclub and publishing a fashion magazine.

Perth Glory owner and mining magnate Tony Sage. Picture: Philip Gostelow

On the east coast, he’s been a frequent flyer in the luxurious Emirates marquee that the Dubai-based airline runs at the Melbourne Cup, and is close to former St Kilda vice president Ross Levin, a lawyer who helped defend the footy club during its schoolgirl sex scandal in 2010.

His fortune comes from riding the boom and bust rollercoaster of Perth’s mining sector — and it is these activities that court documents show are the focus of Lemans investigators drawn from the AFP, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Tax Office.

Lemans rocked West Australia’s business and sporting worlds on December 19, 2012, when police raided four Perth addresses – Mr Sage’s office, the Perth Glory offices, which were just around the corner, the businessman’s $4.4m beachside mansion and an apartment in Fremantle belonging to an associate, seizing tens of thousands of documents.

The court documents also reveal that Lemans included six additional previously unreported raids.

In 2013 officers swooped twice on the city offices of corporate advisor Indian Ocean Capital seeking information about a stockbroker, Gary Castledine, and also hit the offices of accountants Hewitt, Turner & Gelevitis.

Gary Castledine. Picture: Alf Sorbello

And in 2014 they again raided the offices of Mr Sage and Perth Glory, as well as searching city law firm Steinepreis Paganin.

In the search warrants, investigators made untested allegations that Mr Sage “provided an illegitimate benefit to a foreign public official in Sierra Leone in order to gain a business advantage related to the Marampa iron ore project” — a project that Mr Sage’s company, Cape Lambert Resources, claimed was worth as much as US$1.2bn ($A1.76bn) once fully developed.

He was also accused of paying a secret commission, dealing with $550,000 that was the proceeds of stealing, insider trading, and three different kinds of tax fraud, including disguising $19.8m in income as loan payments made by a complex web of offshore companies.

The court paperwork also shows how investigators used data from AUSTRAC, Australia’s financial intelligence agency, to allege that tens of millions of dollars flowed from local companies controlled by Mr Sage out to companies in a tax haven in the British Virgin Islands that were run by his old friend, Frank Timis, and back again, disguised as loan repayments.

Frank Timis (right) with Sir Bob Geldoff. Picture: Supplied

In other untested allegations, business associate Timothy Turner was accused of conspiring with Mr Sage and corporate adviser Mr Guiliani to produce a false document to the Tax Office.

So far only one person, Castledine, has been convicted as a result of Lemans. On November 30 he was sentenced to 13 months jail, fully suspended, for attempted insider trading after he passed Mr Sage a tip about a big diamond discovery by Lonhro Mining.

Mr Sage didn’t act on the tip and has not been charged with anything.

Timothy Turner. Picture: Tony McDonough

The warrants also show that cops were looking for documents related to several people who are not accused of any crime.

These include two Australians who make a living from volatile international resources markets: Dubai-based Australian Mick “Manynames” Shemesian, a mining figure who earned his nickname through the many different spellings of his name on official documents, and Timis, who in the 90s was twice convicted of possession of heroin with intent to supply and was last seen in 2019 angrily denying wrongdoing after being accused by the BBC of standing to reap as much as US$10bn ($A14.65bn) from a controversial petrol deal in Senegal.

The Federal Court case continues. An AFP spokeswoman declined to comment on Operation Lemans except to say that the investigation continues.

Mr Sage and Mr Guiliani didn’t respond to News Corp’s questions.

Asked if he wanted to respond to the AFP’s allegations, Mr Turner said: “No thanks.”