Anti-corruption watchdog packs sharp legal bite

What is the anti-corruption agency set to investigate Gladys Berejiklian and who are the faces behind it?

Premier Gladys Berejiklian. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

The NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption will investigate Gladys Berejiklian over whether she allowed or encouraged her former boyfriend Daryl Maguire to engage in corrupt ­activity as well as whether she misused her public office.

In a media statement released on Friday that sparked Ms Berejiklian’s resignation as NSW premier, ICAC revealed she was now the subject of its investigations.

The media statement, issued on ICAC’s website but not attributed to any of the ICAC commissioners, revolves around two grants to bodies in Mr Maguire’s former Wagga Wagga electorate.

The inquiry, expected to last 10 days, will focus on two NSW government grants, of $5.5m to the Australian Clay Target Association in 2016-17 and of $20m to the Riverina Conservatorium of Music in Wagga in 2018.

ICAC is probing whether Ms Berejiklian breached the public trust by exercising public functions “in circumstances where she was in a position of conflict ­between her public duties and her private interest as a person who was in a personal relationship’’ with Mr Maguire. ICAC is also probing whether she exercised any of her “official functions’’ in the awarding of the grants while in a relationship with Mr Maguire. A further aspect of the investigation is whether she was “liable to allow or encourage the occurrence of corrupt conduct by Mr Maguire’’.

Ms Berejiklian, who last year revealed her relationship with Mr Maguire while a witness in an ICAC inquiry probing his conduct, will appears for a public interrogation before ICAC on October 18.

  

Ms Berejiklian has denied any inappropriate behaviour.

Counsel assisting in ICAC’s ­direct probe of Ms Berejiklian will be barrister Scott Robertson and Alex Brown.

Mr Robertson was counsel ­assisting when the public first heard about a “close personal relationship” between Ms Berejiklian and Mr Maguire while she was on the stand as a witness last year.

Ms Berejiklian is the third premier after Barry O’Farrell and Nick Greiner to resign as a result of investigations by ICAC.

Former Supreme Court judge Peter Hall QC leads the NSW ICAC. Mr Hall, counsel assisting on the Building Industry Royal Commission and the inquiry into the Waterfall train disaster, was ­appointed to the bench in 2005 and appointed as chief commissioner of the ICAC in 2017.

Mr Hall was admitted to the bar in 1974, appointed Queens Counsel in 1992, and as a judge to the ­Supreme Court of NSW in 2005. He has also sat in the Equity Division, the Court of Criminal Appeal and the Criminal Trial Division.

He is assisted by part-time commissioners Patricia McDonald SC, whose career spans corporate fraud, tax avoidance, drug important and terrorism, and Stephen Rushton, a barrister who has been involved with bodies including the Police Integrity Commission, NSW Coroners Court and ICAC.

Ms McDonald has a special ­interest in sports law, having ­appeared before the Court of Arbitration for Sport. She is a member of the AFL NSW/ACT Appeals Tribunal.

Mr Rushton, also appointed in 2017 as a part-time commissioner, joined the Bar in 1986. He has been involved in various investigatory bodies and until last year was environment counsel to the Environment Protection Authority.