Rosemary Rogers: How fraudster former NAB chief of staff’s lavish life unravelled

A high-ranking employee and her ‘sister’ allegedly carried out a con that netted millions for holidays and homes, court told.

A once high-ranking NAB employee and the woman who allegedly funnelled millions of dollars in kickbacks into her accounts referred to each other as “bestie” and “sister from another mother”.

Court documents allege that Rosemary Rogers, then chief of staff to the NAB chief executive, formed an “ongoing agreement” with Helen Rosamond to favour her events company the Human Group with work for the bank.

Ms Rosamond allegedly organised small gifts for Rogers like a $1600 hotel room at Melbourne’s Crown Casino in 2013. A year later, this grew into an eight-­person, $620,000 US holiday for Rogers’s family, court documents allege. Police allege Rogers then signed off on inflated invoices “without scrutiny” submitted by the events contractor and personally gained about $5.5m in gifts, including a car, a boat and overseas holidays.

During Rogers’s reign as chief of staff to former NAB boss Andrew Thorburn, which ended in December 2017, the bank paid Human Group more than $44m in revenue — 97 per cent of all its business. “During this time, the two became extremely close and were in nearly daily contact, also meeting for lunch every few weeks even though Rogers was based in Melbourne and Rosamond lived in Sydney,” agreed facts tendered to court state.

Ms Rosamond, who denies all allegations against her, is also alleged to have bought Rogers holidays to Europe and Fiji, given her a BMW and $1.5m to buy a home in Melbourne’s Williamstown.

It is alleged the two got so close that Ms Rosamond changed her will in 2015 to instruct that 5 per cent of her estate should go to Rogers in the event of her death.

The detail of Rogers’s deception of her employer of 22 years can be revealed as she faces jail after pleading guilty to a string of charges, including corruptly receiving a benefit and obtaining a financial gain by deception.

Downing Centre District Court was told at a sentence hearing on Monday that she had the personal authority to approve invoices of up to $20m and showed “complete and utter recklessness” in her corrupt activities.

The court heard the 45-year-old never knew the woman she was allegedly in cahoots with, Ms Rosamond, was allegedly “loading up” by skimming millions of dollars for herself.

Ms Rosamond, 44, has pleaded not guilty to more than 70 offences and will fight her charges at a trial in 2021.

Rogers’s barrister, Mark Tedeschi QC, said the Melbourne woman believed Ms Rosamond’s only benefit from the scheme was an agreement for the renewal of lucrative contracts she held with the bank.

He alleged his client was just “pushing a button” to approve the former Human Group director’s invoices, which he said contained such little detail there was cause for “disbelief” an organisation like NAB would pay them out.

“She assumed that the only bogus part of it was (inflating costs) to cover for her own benefit,” he said. “She didn’t know Ms Rosamond was loading up for her own benefit.”

The court heard Rogers has paid back more than $4m to the NSW Crime Commission and will give evidence at Ms Rosamond’s trial. She is on bail before she is sentenced on January 24, 2021.