Union royal commission: Charges urged for NUW officials

Former union boss Derrick Belan, his brother and niece could face fraud charges for allegedly misusing union credit cards.

Former union boss Derrick Belan, his brother and his niece could face fraud and larceny charges for allegedly using ­National Union of Workers ­credit cards to make “personal purchases” ranging from holidays to toys, restaurant meals and a $430 tattoo.

Counsel for the royal commission argued yesterday that commissioner Dyson Heydon should refer the case to police, outlining 27 potential breaches of civil or criminal laws by four union officials and the union’s bookkeeper.

Mr Belan stood down last month after 14 years as secretary as the scale of fraud at the branch emerged. He, his successor Wayne Meaney and branch president Marilyn Issanchon, who is also president of the peak body Unions NSW, may have broken Fair Work laws for “seriously deficient” governance and “severely lacking” oversight at the NSW branch, counsel said.

There was an “unhealthy devolution of power on the secretary without appropriate checks and balances”, and a “grave failure of governance ... which has in turn allowed apparently criminal conduct to go undetected for a period of years”, the submissions state.

Mr Belan, his brother Nick and his niece, bookkeeper Danielle O’Brien, may have committed eight criminal offences between them, counsel said, despite Derrick Belan’s testimony that he asked for spending on union cards to be repaid from his wage. The inquiry heard more than $600,000 in purchases were charged to Derrick Belan’s union credit cards over the past nine years, with at least $50,000 identified as personal items.

He also paid more than $254,000 from branch funds to former state NSW MP Paul Gibson under an unwritten agreement to provide “consulting” services that potentially broke Fair Work laws, counsel submitted. Mr Gibson told the commission he was paid to bring “harmony” between Mr Belan and former ALP general secretary Sam Dastyari. “That the national office of the union was apparently unable to detect such problems and intervene until the commission brought these problems to light is also of profound concern,” counsel said.

The union’s national secretary Tim Kennedy said counsel’s statement was “true”. “We don’t have the power under the rules (to intervene) ... the branch is a separate legal entity and state systems allow personal fiefdoms to occur,” he said.

He will seek a national management committee resolution today to push the NSW branch to work with the national office to “rebuild the branch from the ground up” and to rescind a deed, signed by Mr Meaney, freeing Mr Belan of liability. “To actually fix things up in NSW we will need the co-operation which we didn’t’ have that under the previous leadership,” he said.