By Erin Pearson
The jailing of disgraced Aboriginal elder Geoff Clark for stealing more than $1 million from an Indigenous community he treated as his own kingdom was “a long time coming”, his victims said.
Indigenous leaders from the tiny mission in regional Victoria wept and embraced outside court on Friday, marking the end of what has been described as the largest and most complex fraud investigation the state has ever seen.
Framlingham community leaders Joanne McGuinness, Possum Clark-Ogle and Joanne McGuinness outside the County Court in Melbourne on Friday.Credit: Wayne Taylor
Clark was jailed for at least three years and nine months for stealing from Framlingham Mission in the state’s south-west, with the judge finding he had “emphatically betrayed its trust”.
Community leader Possum Clark-Ugle described it as “bitter-sweet, a long time coming”.
“We don’t like seeing our own people being incarcerated, but if you do the crime, you do the time. That’s how it is,” he said.
Community leader Joanne McGuinness said the ruling marked the end of Clark’s grip on the mission.
“That was his kingdom and he protected it the way he wanted,” she said.
Geoff Clark outside the County Court in September, after being found guilty of multiple charges of fraud and theft.Credit: Eddie Jim
Clark, 72, was once Australia’s most senior Indigenous leader, but on Friday appeared via video link – wearing prison greens – from Hopkins Correctional Centre.
In September, it was revealed Clark had been found guilty by three separate juries of 25 charges including obtaining financial advantage by deception, theft, perjury and knowingly dealing in the proceeds of crime.
Geoff Clark with then-prime minister John Howard.Credit: Fairfax
County Court judge Michael O’Connell found Clark had carefully engaged in a calculated course of conduct over many years to divert community funds for his own purposes.
A five-year investigation, codenamed Operation Omega, found Clark had taken the money to pay off personal legal fees and living expenses over more than a decade.
He used Indigenous community funds to pay $460,000 to a law firm between 2000 and 2009, for work stemming from an unrelated court case and an unfair dismissal claim against the government.
Clark also pocketed rental money meant for community coffers and the financial benefits of an eel licence, while also using community money to pay rates and electricity bills for his properties near Warrnambool and Halls Gap.
He also stole more than $400,000 from Kirrae Whurrong Aboriginal Corporation, Maar Land Council and Framlingham Aboriginal Trust, fraudulently dealing with more than $922,000 in community funds in western Victoria.
All of these organisations were controlled by Clark in the 2000s.
One leader of the Framlingham community wrote in a victim impact statement that Clark “not just spiritually hurt our people but financially raped us”.
O’Connell said Clark had developed a sense of entitlement and came to treat the community’s financial resources as his own.
“In the various ways in which these frauds were perpetrated you contrived to conflate your own personal interests with the interests of the community,” the judge said.
“In so acting, you emphatically betrayed its trust.
“You stole on multiple occasions in a variety of ways to personally benefit and/or strengthen your power and influence in the community. That you did so, having otherwise achieved so much, is profoundly disappointing.”
O’Connell noted there was a great deal of community resentment towards Clark.
But he accepted the suggestion Clark had led a double life – on the one hand doing good for First Nations people, while also offending over many years.
“It is … difficult to reconcile the conflict between the good that you have done and the wrongs that you have committed. This is a particularly complex sentencing exercise,” he said.
O’Connell said Clark had exploited the weak governance structures at the community organisations. At the same time, the court heard, the state government department meant to support and guide its running was “distracted” with other matters.
“Had the Framlingham community been provided with guidance and support that the act envisaged, things may have been different,” O’Connell said.
Clark’s son Jeremy Clark, 51, was also found guilty of being party to the theft of $230,000 in funds with his father. He also pleaded guilty to dishonestly obtaining $10,000 from the Commonwealth to convert a garage for his younger brother, Aaron Clark, into a home office in Ballarat in 2009.
An earlier hearing was told that money had since been repaid.
O’Connell sentenced Geoff Clark to six years and two months in jail with a non-parole period of three years and nine months.
Jeremy Clark – who the judge said had since moved out of his father’s shadow – was convicted and sentenced to two years and two months in jail, which was wholly suspended.
Outside court, Framlingham community leaders including McGuinness and Clark-Ugle embraced and shed tears.
Clark-Ugle said he hoped the sentence would help unite the fractured community, as many who had spoken up about Geoff Clark’s misconduct had been shunned and isolated over the years.
Framlingham residents Joanne McGuinness, Possum Clark-Ugle, Shirley McGuinness and Kyeema Penrith.Credit: Wayne Taylor
For too long, Clark-Ugle said, people were kept in the dark about their rights and entitlement to funds due to Clark’s power grabs and betrayals.
“We can’t change what happened in the past, we can only shape the future,” he said.
McGuinness said Geoff Clark’s offending meant the community had missed out on opportunities to improve health, housing, culture and connection to land.
“He divided families,” she said.
“You’ve still got people in the community that see the twinkle in his eye … that think they’re indebted to him. That’s hard to change.”
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