Former Elders real estate manager ‘confessed’ to internal probe into his alleged misappropriation of company money, Northern Territory Supreme Court told

REAL estate agent Chris Deutrom was ‘frantic’ when he rang the man investigating him to ‘confess’ misusing company money, the Supreme Court has heard

REAL estate agent Chris Deutrom was “frantic” when he rang the man investigating him to “confess” misusing company money, the Supreme Court has heard.

Elders Ltd Northern zone operations manager Tim Walker leaves the NT Supreme Court during the fraud trial of the firm's former head of Darwin real estate, Chris Deutrom

Mr Deutrom, the former manager of Elders real estate agencies in Darwin, has pleaded not guilty to eight counts of obtaining benefit by deception, stemming from a series of alleged frauds on the firm totalling approximately $230,000.

Elders zone operation manager Tim Walker told the second day of Mr Deutrom’s trial on Tuesday of an early morning phone call in October 2016.

“Chris … Mr Deutrom called me,” he said.

“He said, ‘Tim, I need to tell you something. I haven’t had a wink of sleep all night’.”

Mr Walker told the court Mr Deutrom went on to “confess” to taking “about another $145,000” in advertising rebates from the NT News and real estate site realestate.com.au, which were meant to be paid to the company.

“He said that they were from rebates, that he had got himself into financial trouble and that he needed to confess all of that,” Mr Walker told the court.

Asked whether Mr Deutrom provided any details of his “financial trouble”, Mr Walker said: “he said that just his commitments and he’d built a house and all those sorts of things”.

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“He said that he was hoping that he would be able to sell his house and pay back the funds and no one would ever know about what had occurred.”

Mr Walker said he told Mr Deutrom to call the duo’s boss, Greg Dunne, who had instructed Mr Walker to probe potential misappropriation of company money by Mr Deutrom.

Mr Walker told the court Mr Deutrom called back later that day “frantic, frantic that he needed to speak to Greg”, who was meeting with a client that day.

Mr Walker told the court the day before Mr Deutrom “confessed” he had flagged concerns about other anomalies.

“I recall him saying, ‘this just won’t go away, will it?’,” Mr Walker said.

“I gave him the amounts and dates.

“He said to me “there must be some mistake but I’ll go and check”.

“He said … I don’t know what happened, there must be some mistake, I don’t have the funds to return them to you.”

Former Elders real estate agent Chris Deutrom leaves the NT Supreme Court with his wife, Helen, on the first day of his fraud trial

Under cross-examination from Mr Deutrom’s barrister, Jon Tippett QC, Mr Walker agreed he did not personally extract emails from the Elders servers in Adelaide.

“Our investigators did, our internal auditors did,” Mr Walker said.

Crown Prosecutor David Morters SC said the line of cross-examination was “grandstanding”. Mr Dunne earlier told the court Mr Deutrom wanted to keep his job right up until he was handed a letter terminating his employment.

“He asked me if I was going to refer (the alleged fraud) to police,” Mr Dunne said.

“I said that the company would most probably refer it to police.

“We’re an ASX listed business so we would have to do that as a business.”

Mr Dunne said the conversation about referring Mr Deutrom’s conduct to police took place “to the best of my knowledge” after his employment had been terminated.

He told the court Mr Deutrom had paid $90,000 to Elders in early 2017, on top of $14,410 repaid in 2016, but that the company received nothing from Mr Deutrom beyond that.

Mr Tippett, while cross examining Mr Dunne, repeatedly referred to the rebate payments as “kickbacks”, a term Mr Dunne said he did not accept.

“They give a rebate,” Mr Dunne said. “I wouldn’t call it a kickback.”

Mr Morters said the characterisation of the rebate payments was “completely irrelevant to the proceedings”.

The trial continues.