‘Murder, bashing, all sorts of crap’ alleged by CFMEU man

“Murders”, “bashings” and “death threats” flowed from a deal between NSW construction union representatives and a Sydney company.

Darren Greenfield leaves the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption. Picture: Jeremy Piper.

“Murders”, “bashings” and “death threats” flowed from a deal between NSW construction union representatives and a Sydney scaffolding company, the royal commission heard yesterday, as a central figure in the intrigue claimed for the first time he was “being set up”.

Darren Greenfield, an organiser with the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, was in charge of collecting payments for union members from employer Elite Access Scaffolding, which was party to a workplace agreement. Mr Greenfield said he felt his life “was on the line” and he feared for his family as the ownership of the business dissolved in 2013.

Elite’s six owners included George Alex, a bankrupt businessman who has been accused of making death threats and revealed to have close ties to the CFMEU’s stood-aside NSW boss Brian “Sparkles” Parker, as well as Joe Antoun, who was shot dead in front of his wife and children after falling out with his co-owners, and Jimmy Kendrovski, who is in prison.

“These six individuals … they split around this time, there was big arguments between them … with deaths, assaults and all sorts of stuff. One of the owners, I was told by a couple of individuals, was taking more money than the other partners and he was using me and the union to cover that with them.

“That’s why I raised ... about me being set up with this stuff.”

Dealings between the partners became “vicious”, he said.

Mr Greenfield has also been accused of making threats against whistleblower Brian Fitzpatrick, who challenged Mr Parker for giving union backing to companies run by Mr Alex.

Grilled over his duties at the CFMEU, Mr Greenfield repeatedly denied his job was to collect kickbacks from Mr Alex.

The commission heard Mr Greenfield refer to Mr Alex and his associates as “dogs” and “c. ts” in an intercepted phone call with another CFMEU representative, Mario Barrios, who claimed to have been threatened by Mr Alex after he challenged Mr Parker about his relationship with the Alex companies,

Mr Greenfield said the two years he dealt with the Alex companies were “two of the hardest years of my life … There was murders, there was bashings, there was all sorts of crap”.