Former NSW Labor boss met Huang Xiangmo days before $100,000 banked

Former NSW Labor boss Jamie Clements met controversial billionaire Huang Xiangmo two days before the party banked a $100,000 cash donation that was delivered to the party's head office, a corruption inquiry has heard.

Mr Clements, a key witness in the Independent Commission Against Corruption's inquiry into the source of the cash, said on Thursday it was "possible" the property developer gave him a gift during the meeting on April 7, 2015, but "the only thing it would have been would have been wine".

Jamie Clements arrives at the ICAC on Thursday.Credit: AAP

In an emotional stint in the witness box, Mr Clements appeared to choke back tears when he said he was "very close to a breakdown" in 2017 when he learned the Electoral Commission was investigating the NSW ALP over the 2015 donation.

Mr Clements said the April 2015 meeting with Mr Huang at NSW Labor's head office in Sydney's Sussex Street followed an earlier lunch at Mr Huang's Mosman mansion on March 15, 2015, where "we were drinking Grange".

The ICAC is investigating allegations that Mr Huang handed Mr Clements an Aldi shopping bag containing $100,000 during the course of the Sussex Street meeting, held days after the March 28 state election.

Mr Huang, who was banned from donating to political parties in NSW under laws targeting property developers, has declined to give evidence at the ICAC but has denied he was the source of the cash.

Mr Clements denied Mr Huang handed over any cash in the office and said the billionaire had sought the meeting because he wanted to meet then federal Labor leader Bill Shorten.

"I would have said 'of course I'll get you a meeting,'" Mr Clements said. "We had dinner with Mr Shorten shortly after."

He said he was "not in a position to categorically deny the possibility that they [Mr Huang and an executive assistant from the developer's Yuhu Group] had a bag which included a gift for me at that meeting" but it would not have been money.

The ICAC has heard that on April 9, 2015, two days after the meeting between Mr Clements and Mr Huang, the party banked $100,000 in cash that was delivered to the party's head office.

Mr Clements said he had "never heard" of such a large volume of cash arriving in a single delivery. Despite this being unusual, he said he was not made aware of it at the time.

Asked if he was saying that nobody drew his attention to the fact "$100,000 has waltzed in off the street" and into head office in April 2015, he said: "I would have remembered that."

Mr Clements has previously told the ICAC that he met with then NSW Labor MP Ernest Wong in July 2017. He claimed Mr Wong told him that the party's community relations director, Kenrick Cheah, had given evidence at a private interview with the NSW Electoral Commission that Mr Huang was the source of the $100,000 and the billionaire had handed it to Mr Clements in an Aldi bag in 2015.

"I had no idea what he was talking about," Mr Clements said on Thursday.

The ICAC is investigating whether NSW Labor figures used straw donors on false donation declaration forms to disguise the fact that Mr Huang was the true source of the donation.

A series of members of the Chinese community have given evidence that they signed false declaration forms relating to a Chinese Friends of Labor fundraising dinner on March 12, 2015.

Mr Clements said on Thursday that the lunch with Mr Huang at his Mosman mansion was also attended by Mr Wong and took place on March 15, 2015, three days after the fundraising dinner.

"I couldn’t understand why they don’t drink white wine with seafood and [I was] trying to sell them on a particular type of French white wine," Mr Clements said.

Mr Clements has previously admitted Mr Huang gave him $35,000 in a wine box in August 2015 to pay his personal legal bills.  He admitted he did not tell the NSW Labor Party about the gift.

The barrister acting for NSW Labor, Arthur Moses, SC, put it to Mr Clements that "for all intents and purposes" he could have been the "stooge" of Mr Huang and the party would not have known.

Mr Clements rejected the suggestion and said, "What's a stooge?"

The former party boss admitted on Wednesday Mr Huang had also given him $10,000 in cash in about May 2015 for a union campaign, at his request. He also did not disclose to the union the source of the cash but said he did not feel compromised by the gift.

"How would he hold it over me? He donated all the time," Mr Clements said.

Mr Moses put it to Mr Clements that he asked Mr Huang for the $10,000 in May 2015 because "you knew [Mr Huang] ... was good for it" as the billionaire had "already delivered $100,000 in cash" to him in April.

Asked by Mr Moses if the truth was "too awful for you to admit", Mr Clements said "no". He said former NSW Labor Senator Sam Dastyari, his predecessor in head office, had told him Mr Huang would be "amenable" to giving him the $10,000 for the union campaign.

Mr Clements said he had cultivated Mr Huang as a donor to the federal branch of the party, where donations from property developers are not banned.

The ICAC has heard Mr Clements went to work for Mr Huang as a consultant on a retainer worth more than $600,000 over three years after he resigned as party boss in January 2016.

The inquiry continues.