Former Council CEO Carl Wulff opens up in prison interview after corruption conviction
A former southeast Queensland council CEO who was locked up for corruption has told how his sentence has impacted him in an eye-opening jailhouse interview, saying he has lost everything from friends to finances. SEE THE VIDEO
QLD News
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DISGRACED former Ipswich City Council chief executive Carl Wulff has done a tell-all interview from his prison cell about his corruption charges and life on the inside.
In a sensational video, released by the State’s corruption watchdog on Monday, Wulff calls prison life comparable to terminal cancer and says he has lost everything from friends to finances due to his actions.
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Wulff was jailed in February after pleading guilty to two counts of official corruption and one count of attempting to pervert the course of justice.
He was sentenced to five years imprisonment, suspended after 20 months, for receiving corrupt payments for awarding council contracts to his mates.
“The only thing I could even think of that would be comparable would be being told you had a terminal illness,” he says in the video.
“I’ve been through a lot of things in my life - divorces, death in the family. All of those basically pale in significance compared to the impact of being charged with a corruption and pervert the course of justice charge.
“If you’ve been through a divorce, that’s very stressful. If you’ve been through a death in the family it’s very stressful. But if you want to rate those on a scale of one to 10, then this exercise with a corruption charge is probably a 12 and a death in the family and a divorce is about five.”
Dressed in his prison greens, with a shaved head, Wulff recalls the first time he was ever offered a bribe.
He was studying to be an engineer in the 1970s and was working to design driveways on private property when a contractor offered him $50 to finish a driveway ahead of schedule.
He claims he turned down the offer.
Wulff also says he has lost many friends and can “count on one hand” the friends he retained after being charged with corruption.
“I know that now I can count on one hand the people I’d classify as still being friends. Your social circle basically just about disappears,” he says.
Wulff passes the time by reading and counting the days but says there is “not much to do” in prison and every day causes him anxiety.
“I’ve probably never experienced this level of anxiety that I experience on a daily basis since I’ve been in prison,” he says.
“Every day you wake up and you’re not sure what’s going to happen.”
The video - filmed by the Crime and Corruption Commission - was shot while Wulff was on remand at Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre.
Wulff says he accepted corrupt payments because a business venture of his had “gone bad” and his investments following the Global Financial Crisis were not doing well.
In hindsight, Wulff says he would “just say no” to corrupt payments.
“Some of the things I’ve been offered in the past I should have actually documented and reported,” Wulff says.
“If I had to wind back the clock, that’s what I’d do now.”
Originally published as Former Council CEO Carl Wulff opens up in prison interview after corruption conviction