Whistleblower Kim Rogerson exposes slug gate scandal

A City of Dandenong health inspector has accused council staff of being manipulative and corrupt, alleging they cooked up a scheme to shut down a family business by planting a slug.

There was always a small slimy creature at the heart of the “Slug Gate” debacle. The question is, which other slimy creatures were involved in planting it in I Cook Foods’ commercial kitchen one summer day in early 2019. And why?

Now the whistleblower in the case has issued a writ that names names, accusing certain Dandenong council employees of witness coaching, perjury — and of planting evidence in other cases, such as dead mice in a fast food outlet.

Slug Gate reaches from the factory floor (literally) in Zenith Rd, Dandenong, all the way to Spring St via the Health Ministry. It casts a shadow over the state’s former chief health officer Brett Sutton and some of his staff, not to mention senior police who appear to have nobbled a strangely toothless investigation.

At the business end of the scandal are two relative underlings, both health inspectors, who are pawns in what appears to be a game about money and power played well above their pay grade.

iCook Foods in Dandenong South. Picture: Google

One of the two is the whistleblower, Kim Rogerson, who issued a writ against their employer, the City of Dandenong, linked to the alleged activities of her fellow inspector, Elizabeth Garlick.

But Rogerson’s writ also names at least two superiors as manipulative and corrupt bullies who cooked up a scheme with Garlick to wreck the Cook family’s business.

Rogerson is the authorised officer who had inspected the I Cook Foods premises twice a year over the previous five years without any notable problems. She points out that the senior inspector who trained her had inspected the business for five years before she began, also without incident.

Rogerson was surprised when she was ordered back to the Zenith Rd property in early 2019, only weeks after her routine December inspection. She was told the new inspection was over the illness of an elderly woman in Knox Private Hospital with listeria, food poisoning caused by bacteria.

Rogerson took 11 swabs of food samples and preparation areas. By February 1, she states, laboratory tests made it clear the fatal illness of the unfortunate woman at Knox had nothing to do with sandwiches prepared at I Cook Foods.

By the time the woman died in the first week of February, Rogerson was on two weeks leave to recover from a sinus operation. But, according to the writ she lodged with the Supreme Court, while she was recuperating she got a series of disturbing calls from her team leader, Leanne Johnson.

Whistleblower Kim Rogerson. Picture: Mark Stewart

Kim Rogerson was the registered officer who inspected the facility and said it had no notable problems. Picture: Mark Stewart

Rogerson took at least five calls from Johnson — who insisted Rogerson must have missed something incriminating in the search for traces of listeria.

In the writ, Rogerson lists Johnson’s verbal attacks on her: “things haven’t been done correctly”; “this is all wrong”; “it stinks” “things like this don’t just happen”; “this place was disgusting”; “there are going to be consequences for you.”

She says Johnson warned her she’d had “many meetings” with council chief executive John Bennie and mayor Cr Ros Blades and told them that council officers (meaning Rogerson) had failed in the quest to link listeria to I Cook Foods.

According to the writ, the first of Johnson’s harassing calls to Rogerson was on Monday, February 18. The same day that Elizabeth Garlick went to I Cook Foods to make a separate inspection and miraculously found the slug in the middle of a sterile, chemically-cleaned floor — eye-catching “evidence” that her superiors were clearly anxious to get.

Rogerson states that Johnson bullied her to agree to a revised report that would implicate I Cook Foods in the illness of the Knox patient.

When Rogerson returned to work on March 6 (according to her writ) Leanne Johnson repeatedly pulled her aside for private “meetings” in which she hissed that Rogerson’s investigation of I Cook Foods wasn’t thorough enough to charge the business over the old woman’s death.

A photo showing a slug found in the iCook Foods (left) facility in Dandenong that was sent to owners, compared to the original photo (right) taken during a health inspection.

Johnson’s attitude was “angry, accusatory, intimidatory and hostile,” Rogerson states. In one impromptu “meeting” in a private room near the council photocopiers, Johnson shouted and made her “fearful.”

But Johnson wasn’t the only one.

Johnson told her that a senior council officer from another section, Greg Spicer, was “doing all the statements.”

Rogerson questioned this, given Spicer was leader of the council’s planning and compliance department and not an authorised officer under the Food Act.

Spicer bulldozed Rogerson’s objections, she states, telling her that her earlier reports were “not what we want” and ordering her “to remove all this stuff” that was in I Cook Foods’ favour.

He also tried to force her to agree that Ben Cook (son of I Cook Foods principal Ian Cook) had been warned that the premises were unsanitary and “unsafe”, which wasn’t true in either way.

Spicer subsequently drafted six versions of a sworn statement that reflected badly on I Cook Foods and finally coerced Rogerson to sign the final version on April 3 to force a prosecution of the business, she states in the writ. She feared she would lose her job otherwise.

At one point, Spicer told her and Garlick and four other council employees that he wanted all their reports to “sound the same so we can nail these bastards.”

Rogerson was shocked at the hostility towards I Cook Foods by key council employees answerable to the City of Dandenong’s then chief executive John Bennie. She inspected up to 300 premises a year and I Cook Foods always compared favourably with most.

I Cook Foods principal Ian Cook (centre) in the preparation room at the business in Dandenong South. Retired Detective Sergeant Paul Brady (left) and retired Detective Inspector Rod Porter (right), with the mountain of evidence submitted to Victoria Police. Picture: Alex Coppel

Meanwhile, she noticed that Garlick and Leanne Johnson were working together to “workshop” the later notorious body camera footage recording Garlick’s alleged discovery of a slug on the I Cook Food factory floor.

Rogerson’s desk was near Garlick’s and she alleges in the writ she saw Garlick and Johnson use an editing tool to circle and edit out a small piece of tissue appearing in the image near the slug.

What Johnson and Garlick did not know then, of course, was that a virtually identical photograph of the slug taken at the same time by Michael Cook showed the tissue, apparent “smoking gun” evidence that Garlick had used tissues to carry the slug in her smock pocket to plant it at the scene.

The doctoring of the Garlick photograph is what created the Slug Gate scandal.

In her writ, Rogerson’s summary is that Garlick’s doctored photographic images were “intentionally exaggerated” to “injure ICF.”

Perhaps her most damaging accusation is that Garlick already had a reputation for taking shortcuts. Rogerson states in the writ she had heard complaints of Garlick planting evidence in other cases to gain convictions and extract heavy fines from food store owners.

Mr Cook's company was closed after a slug was allegedly planted by a council official. Picture: Alex Coppel

Rogerson states that Garlick told her in January 2019 she had been transferred from her previous council zone (to the I Cook Foods zone) to “secure convictions.”

Rogerson further states that Garlick and Johnson’s manipulation of “evidence” such as dead mice was discussed by their fellow council staff.

She states that Garlick had closed “two separate retail food businesses” by “having magnified the presence of a dead mouse or … planting of a dead mouse on the respective premises, a Red Rooster … in Dandenong and a delicatessen … on Railway Parade in Noble Park.”

A court will ultimately decide whether Elizabeth Garlick, Leanne Johnson and Greg Spicer conspired to bully Kim Rogerson in order to trump up charges against I Cook Foods.

As for what motive Dandenong council officers like Garlick might have to get convictions for breaches of the Food Act, Spicer allegedly told Rogerson: “This will look great on your CV when the big fines start to flow in.”

This was a reference to the fact that huge fines of up to $500,000 imposed for breaches of the Food Act go straight into council coffers.

The new mayor, Jim Memeti, went out of his way to praise the departing CEO, John Bennie, who’d been a potent player in Dandenong business and civic affairs in his 16 years at the wheel.

Bennie had “a good name” and was “a really honest, hard-working and caring” person who was “going on his own terms,” Mayor Memeti insisted.

Meanwhile, the Cook family is set to have their first day in court in July. It has been widely reported they will seek at least $50m to cover the destruction of their business.

Watch this space.