The family of crooked Labor kingpin Eddie Obeid was scheming to ''effectively control all of Sydney's water'' and make $100 million in the process, the Independent Commission Against Corruption has heard.

Gardner Brook, a former Lehman Brothers banker, told the inquiry on Tuesday that in 2008 Moses Obeid had told him the water deal ''eclipsed'' the family's plans for a coal venture.

Mr Brook was the ICAC's star witness at a previous inquiry where the Obeids were revealed to have reaped $30 million from a corrupt coal deal involving former mining minister Ian Macdonald.

The commission is investigating allegations the Obeid family owned a secret 30 per cent stake in Australian Water Holdings and stood to make up to $60 million from a proposed public-private partnership with the state government.

In a statement to the commission, Mr Brook said Moses Obeid told him his family had ''an ownership in Australian Water'' as well as ''great influence over it''.

Mr Brook also said Moses Obeid had confided that ''the company was looking into a privatisation deal where they could effectively control all of Sydney's water''.Mr Brook said he had previously met Moses Obeid and AWH chief executive Nick Di Girolamo at his Lehman Brothers office in July 2008. The inquiry has heard that Mr Di Girolamo is a prominent Liberal Party fund-raiser and associate of the Obeid family. At the time, Mr Brook understood Mr Di Girolamo was the Obeids' business partner.

A month later, Mr Brook said he attended a meeting at Moses Obeid's Elizabeth Bay residence. Former Labor minister Joe Tripodi was already there and Mr Obeid senior arrived later, Mr Brook said.

They spoke about AWH for up to half an hour before switching to proposed electricity privatisation.

Mr Brook understood that Moses Obeid was hoping to get a cut by brokering the sale of the government's electricity assets.

Other evidence given at the inquiry revealed that when Arthur Sinodinos left AWH at the end of 2011, the company was in dire financial straits. Financial records submitted at the inquiry show that as of September 2011, AWH owed the Tax Office $720,000.

Despite having no funds, AWH continued to pay monthly retainers, some worth more than $5000, to several Liberal Party lobbyists.

It was around this time the Obeid family, through a trust, injected $400,000 into the business to keep it afloat.

In other evidence, Ian George, an accountant who signed off on the expenses billed to Sydney Water by AWH, told the inquiry that some of the expenses must have been certified ''in error''.

''What I've got is a whole bundle of what might be described as errors,'' Geoffrey Watson, SC, counsel assisting the inquiry, said.

Showing a bill from a luxury hotel, Mr Watson said, ''it strikes me you couldn't have been looking too closely if you let the Sofitel in Cairns go through''.

''I can only assume that it's a mistake,'' Mr George said.

Payments to lobbyists also appeared to have been approved, along with a $2000 gala dinner at the Italian Chamber of Commerce and limousine charges worth $880. Mr Watson asked jokingly if there were sewerage pipes at the back of the limo.

Paul and Moses Obeid are expected to give evidence on Wednesday; Senator Sinodinos on Thursday.

THE eldest son of crooked ex-MP Eddie Obeid admits he might have told a “white lie’’ to the NSW corruption watchdog. 
 
But his family “did not have investor relations’’ with infrastructure company Australian Water Holdings (AWH), he says.

Moses Obeid gave evidence at the Independent Commission against Corruption today as it investigates whether AWH corruptly billed the state-owned Sydney Water for limousine rides, airfares and luxury hotel stays.

It has also been alleged the Obeid family had a hidden stake in the company and that Mr Obeid lobbied NSW ministers and even former premier Kristina Keneally about its operations.

“My family does not own shares in Australian Water and we never have,’’ Moses Obeid told the commission.

“I can put that to you in Bill Clinton fashion: we did not have investor relations in that company.’’

There was a slight pause, before counsel assisting Geoffrey Watson SC asked pointedly: “Was Bill Clinton telling the truth?’’

Mr Watson has indicated he will accuse Moses Obeid of misleading the commission during an interview with ICAC investigators in 2013, when he claimed he knew “nothing, really’’ about Australian Water Holdings.

He also said his knowledge of a related company, Australian Water Pty Ltd, was limited to what he’d seen in the news.

“If it was untrue, Mr Watson, it was a white lie,’’ said Moses Obeid, whose father Eddie Obeid, a former Labor minister, has been found by a previous ICAC hearing to have engaged in corrupt conduct.

Yet Moses Obeid has admitted to signing a heads of agreement document in 2010 that Mr Watson has described as an agreement to buy $3 million worth of shares from former AWH chief Nick Di Girolamo.

Moses Obeid said he believed he was signing off on a simple loan to a family friend.

“I didn’t go through this document chapter and verse,’’ he said, adding that he was “preoccupied’’ with legal disputes when he signed.

“I might have been busting to go to the toilet or something,’’ he joked.

Mr Watson said if that was true, he had skipped a crucial heading.

“They’re three words, the longest of which is six letters,’’ Mr Watson said.

“When you read the words ‘Sale of Shares’, what did you think it meant?’’

The ICAC was earlier told that Mr Di Girolamo left Australian Water Holdings to become a lobbyist who was trying to get the NSW government to approve a coal mine on the NSW Central Coast.

The hearing heard that after leaving Australian Water Holdings, Mr Di Girolamo had lobbied for a Korean mining company Kores for a Central Coast mine Wallarah 2.

His personal assistant Stacey Pittendrigh said Mr Di Girolamo had met Chris Hartcher, the Liberal Minister for Mining, and had sought unsuccessfully to meet the Premier Mr Barry O’Farrell.

Approval for the mine was refused in the dying days of the previous Labor government but the company sought to reapply when the new Coalition government came to power in 2011.

Mr Hartcher and the then Leader of the Opposition were fiercely opposed to the mine in opposition, and were once pictured in T-shirts which read “water, not coal.”

But on election to power, Mr Hartcher proclaimed that mining approvals would be merit-based and handled by an arms-length process of an independent planning assessment committee. This committee is holding a hearing today into the proposal.

Mr Di Girolamo opened an office in the city with Tim Koelma, who resigned from Mr Hartcher’s office in April 2012 after the NSW Liberal Party wrote to the Election Funding Authority alleging a breach of funding laws.

Evidence has been presented to the ICAC that Australian Water Holdings was making regular payments to Eightbyfive, a company associated with Mr Koelma.

The ICAC is investigating if AWH paid Eightbyfive for media and public relations work in return for which Mr Hartcher favoured the interests of AWH.

The ICAC heard that a real estate agent Joseph Georges had lent Mr Di Girolamo $225,000, and that Mr Di Girolamo used the money to pay staff, at his new lobbying venture, including himself $40,000 a month.

Mr Georges said that he had also loaned $700,000 to Australian Water Holdings, with the promise of doubling his money after the mediation of a dispute between Australian Water Holdings and Sydney Water.

He had only recovered $100,000, plus $33,000 in interest.

Mr Hartcher resigned from Cabinet in December when the ICAC announced its inquiry.

Moses Obeid leaves the ICAC hearings in Sydney. Source: News Corp Australia

These people are only part of the larger problem, But they certainly are part of the problem, not part of the solution!

perceptions_now wrote on Apr 2^nd, 2014 at 11:09pm:



pathetic perc.they are scum and scum is always at the top..the whole ugly family deserve jail big time.... I just hope the TAX DEPT is following every word

cods wrote on Apr 3^rd, 2014 at 5:53am:


So does that mean you think the man with the "Top" job in this country presently is scum?

People need to know...