By Megan Gorrey
A Sydney council employee netted tens of thousands of dollars in kickbacks after awarding contracts valued at $4.3 million, a corruption inquiry has heard.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption is investigating allegations former Inner West Council employee, Tony Nguyen, and bureaucrats from the state’s transport agency used their positions dishonestly in awarding contracts to companies for their own benefit in the past decade.
Former Leichhardt and Inner West Council employee Tony Nguyen faces the Independent Commission Against Corruption on Monday.Credit: ICAC
The investigation, dubbed Operation Hector, is also examining the conduct of certain workers from the sharemarket-listed contractor Downer EDI Works. Some allegations in the inquiry date to 2014.
A public hearing on Monday was told multiple local and state government contracts under the spotlight of the inquiry included upgrades to Central and Glenfield train stations, and to Leichhardt Oval.
In a text message read to the inquiry, a Downer employee urged one of the transport bureaucrats to speed up work related to one contract “so people don’t start sniffing around and asking questions”.
Counsel assisting the ICAC, Phillip English, said in his opening address that the two facets of the probe into contracts awarded by the council and Transport for NSW were interrelated, involving common persons of interest and modus operandi linked to alleged corrupt conduct.
“At its core this investigation concerns allegations of collusive tendering across two government organisations involving dissembling conduct, including the use of aliases, the provision of false references and CVs for fictitious persons, known conflicts of interest and secondary employment being kept secret, and the provision of undisclosed commissions and rewards,” English said.
The inquiry heard Nguyen, who was a senior project engineer and property project manager at the former Leichhardt Council and the Inner West Council, had awarded contracts for engineering and construction projects worth about $4.3 million to people he knew between 2015 and 2020. He had done so without declaring any conflicts of interest to the council. For one project, Nguyen allegedly received cash kickbacks between $22,000 and $70,000, the inquiry heard.
English said Nguyen had allegedly engaged in collusive tendering practices, also known as bid rigging, which included passing on budget figures and pricing information from competing bidders to those companies whose quote he intended to have approved.
“Alternatively ... to ensure his preferred supplier was awarded the work, Mr Nguyen would draft both the winning and the unsuccessful quotes, the latter of which are also known colloquially as dummy bids.”
Text messages from a Downer employee to a Transport for NSW bureaucrat tendered to the ICAC on Monday.Credit: ICAC
The projects awarded to companies Nguyen was associated with included upgrades to Pioneers Memorial Park in Leichardt, Leichardt Oval, Petersham Park and Camperdown Memorial Rest Park.
Nguyen gave evidence to the inquiry that creating the dummy quotes made his job easier as he knew the chosen contractors would perform.
“It’s just helping a friend out to some certain extent. If I favour them to do the work, I know they’re there to do the work,” he said.
“If it was to be a different contractor who I had never worked with, I have to be there to babysit them because I don’t know what they’re like or what they’ll do.”
The ICAC is also examining allegations arising from procurement processes for two major contractual projects by Transport for NSW, which used Downer as the principal contractor.
One of the projects was the transport access program to install ramps, lifts and carparks at train stations. The other involved rail corridor and platform upgrades for a new fleet of intercity trains.
The inquiry heard that Nguyen, mostly while he was a council employee, had joined with others to tender for, and often deliver, civil, building and landscaping works at multiple train stations through three separate companies: ASN Contractors, Sanber Group and RJS Infrastructure Group.
“In excess of $10.28 million of public monies was paid to these three companies in 2014 to 2020 in connection with these transport projects,” English said.
English alleged each of the companies had benefited from “improper assistance” from Transport for NSW bureaucrats Nima Abdi and Raja Sanber, and two Downer employees, to help boost the competitiveness of their tenders during the procurement and delivery stages of the projects.
English said none of the three companies had any employees. He said those involved would mostly subcontract the work to other engineering and construction firms and collect a profit on top.
He said the investigation had uncovered other Downer employees appeared to have influenced the awarding of subcontracts for Transport for NSW projects “to companies with which they had an association and, in some cases, in exchange for a benefit without declaring a conflict of interest”.
The inquiry heard one of the Downer employees had sent a text message to Sanber about contract variations for upgrades to one train station in 2017 in which he said: “I am at my limit now and can not push any more veries [variations] through. You need to make it all happen asap so people don’t start sniffing around and asking questions...”
The six-week hearing continues in front of Chief Commissioner John Hatzistergos.
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