Guilty: Former NT Police Commissioner John McRoberts’ web of sex, lies and deceit

IN December 2015, corrupt travel agent Xana Kamitsis was bundled into a van to spend her first night in prison. On Thursday, a jury forewoman got to her feet and declared Kamitsis’ secret lover, former NT police commissioner John McRoberts, guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice > VIDEO

Ex-NT police commissioner John McRoberts leaves the Darwin Supreme Court with barrister Tony Elliott on Thursday following the guilty verdict issued against him

IN December 2015, corrupt travel agent Xana Kamitsis was bundled into a prison van to spend her first night in Holtze prison.

On Thursday, more than two-and-a-half years later, a jury forewoman got to her feet and declared Kamitsis’ secret lover, former NT police commissioner John Ringland McRoberts, 59, guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Alexandra “Xana” Kamitsis outside court

McRoberts’ scandalous involvement with the investigation into his “intimate friend”, a jury found, was a crime.

Kamitsis, a suburban travel agent, didn’t look like the kind of woman who could work her way into the beds of some of some of the Territory’s most powerful.

McRoberts, too, didn’t seem the type anyone might fall for.

A charmless, thin-skinned career cop who, text messages showed, once passed up the offer for dinner with his lover to go and see a Robbie Williams impersonator.

Kamitsis told McRoberts that her heart skipped a beat the first time she saw him.

“I adored making love to you,” Kamitsis said in a text message to the then-top cop in 2012. She had saved his personal phone number as “BB”, which a later message suggests may have stood for “big boy”.

“Sweet dreams big boy xx,” Kamitsis wrote in August 2014, during an exchange in which she likened him to James Bond.

Kamitsis became instantly besotted with McRoberts but text messages show he was not as keen for her as she was for him.

“You know I can’t build a relationship on no communication or intimacy … The whole reason I fell in love with you was because my heart skipped a beat when I saw you … And I am so unhappy in the relationship I am in … We could seat (sic) on the balcony and communicate for hours … I adored making love to you … you cannot build a relationship on a few text messages a week,” she wrote.

READ: FORMER NT POLICE COMISSIONER JOHN McROBERTS FOUND GUILTY

As Kamitsis ingratiated her way into what passed for high society in Darwin during the heady years of the CLP government, her social climbing morphed into rank corruption.

Both her and corrupt CLP staffer Paul Mossman were convicted over the kickbacks she gave him in exchange for booking hundreds of thousands of dollars of ministerial travel. Meanwhile, she was routinely and flagrantly defrauding a taxpayer-funded concession scheme designed to provide subsidised airfares to pensioners.

It was the investigation into that scam which McRoberts attempted, unsuccessfully, to deflect and frustrate.

Former NT police commissioner John McRoberts in 2010.

Kamitsis lavished McRoberts with gifts, flattery and more, while McRoberts directed his personal assistant, Pauline Benaim, to book work trips through Kamitsis’ agency.

“I know U (try and give me the best) and I appreciate that,” McRoberts wrote to her.

“I’m doing my best to direct my business to U.”

Kamitsis responded: “You know it’s not the money that drives me … That is a side bonus.” McRoberts and Kamitsis would also often vent to each other.

Hero Qantas pilot Richard de Crespigny, McRoberts wrote, was a “real tosser”.

Highly respected Territorian Wayne Kraft, McRoberts wrote, was a “Fu$$ wit (…) not impressed at all”, while Kamitsis described a member of the public who complained about his dealings with NT police as “an obnoxious German” and an “absolute tosser”.

The seeds of McRoberts’ demise were sown on the afternoon of May 2, 2014, when he was told Kamitsis was the primary arrest target for what was then known as Operation Holden. McRoberts, the trial heard, declared a “social” and “professional” relationship with Kamitsis but said he was not conflicted and could continue to be involved in the operation.

One of McRoberts’ then-deputies, now Commissioner Reece Kershaw, said he told McRoberts: “well we’re probably going to lock her up”.

He said McRoberts replied, “if she’s going to be charged, she’s going to be charged”.

But the prosecution case – accepted by the jury – was that what began with a “lie by omission” in not declaring the true nature of his relationship morphed into a concerted “course of conduct” aimed at deflecting and frustrating the prosecution of Kamitsis.

When Kamitsis’ agency was on the cusp of being raided in mid-2014 – with a search warrant approved – McRoberts pulled rank and vetoed the warrant. McRoberts, a self-styled innovator, championed an elaborate civil debt recovery scheme as an alternative to the criminal investigation. Had Kamitsis complied with the demands of the so-called interagency taskforce and handed over cash and documents proving her fraud, it is likely her relationship with McRoberts would have been little more than a scandalous small town rumour.

A string of senior cops with more than a century of combined experience told the jury they had never been seen a commissioner cancel a search warrant, although some agreed McRoberts was a “hands on” commissioner, more operational than strategic, in his approach to the job. Over more than a month in the Supreme Court, a string of senior police, bureaucrats, government lawyers and politicians – including former chief minister Adam Giles – laid bare their dealings with McRoberts. At the heart of the case were two basic human weaknesses: sex and power.

Perhaps the most difficult issue for him to overcome was that the entire chain of command below him thought Kamitsis should be raided and arrested, and that his boss, Mr Giles, told him to “go hard” on her. McRoberts was granted bail on Thursday afternoon to get his affairs in order.

A corrections source told the NT News special arrangements had long been planned for McRoberts to serve his time, in almost total isolation in the otherwise overcrowded Alice Springs Correctional Centre. McRoberts, who faces a maximum 15 years jail, will be sentenced on June 25.

Who is John Ringland McRoberts?

2009 — After serving for 30 years in the West Australian police service, he is appointed the NT Police Commissioner on a five-year contract by the Henderson Labor Government.

2010 — Less than 12 months into his tenure, McRoberts is slammed by the Ombudsman over a phone-tapping scandal involving NT News journalists. He authorised the tapping to track down a leak within the “police force”.

NOVEMBER 14, 2014 — Darwin travel agent Xana Kamitsis — McRoberts’ secret lover — is arrested in connection with more than 100 counts of travel rorting. She is frog marched in front of the media into the back of a police wagon. Senior officers wait for McRoberts to be out of town before actioning the arrest warrant.

JANUARY 14, 2015 — McRoberts quits as Police Commissioner, only months into his second five-year contract term, after being linked to Kamitsis, who was accused and subsequently found guilty of fraud. Their romantic links would be revealed during bombshell evidence tendered during the eventual Kamitsis trial.

MARCH TO NOVEMBER, 2015 — Victorian special prosecutor Lesley Taylor QC investigates McRoberts after being handed a brief of evidence by the Australian Federal Police. A file is then handed to the NT Director of Public Prosecutions.

MAY 10, 2016 — McRoberts faces court on charges of perverting the course of justice after being charged two days earlier. He was accused of trying to deflect an investigation into travel agents rorting the NT Health Department’s pensioner concession scheme because of his sexual relationship with its main target, Xana Kamitsis.

APRIL 23, 2018 — Trial of McRoberts starts.

MAY 31, 2018 — McRoberts is found guilty by a jury for perverting the course of justice. He faces a maximum penalty of 15 years jail.