Charles Perrottet, the brother of former NSW premier Dominic Perrottet, finally began giving evidence at the Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac) in Sydney. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
The saga has occupied Icac for nearly four years. It began with the dismissal of the Hills Shire council and a late-night 2022 speech in NSW parliament alleging secret payments from a developer. It then moved to a pressure campaign allegedly to remove the then NSW building commissioner, and ended with real-world impacts: defective high-rise buildings and thousands of unhappy homebuyers, with the developer nowhere to be seen.
Charles Perrottet told the commission that he had met the Toplace developer, Jean Nassif, now a fugitive in Lebanon, in December 2019 and had, over several years, provided him with advice on how to progress his developments. Charles and Nassif bonded over their "frustrations" with David Elliott, the former member for Baulkham Hills, and a key figure in the rival centre-right faction of the Liberals, Charles told Icac.
"He was frustrated with a number of things. I would listen to him, I would appease him, because I wanted information from him," Charles said. Elliott had opposed some of Nassif's developments in the Hills Shire area, earning the developer's ire. Charles, for his part, was angry about Elliott's attempts to unseat his brother Dominic and was looking for information on him.
Despite having a full-time job at BP as head of strategy, Charles was remunerated for his advice, though not directly. "Jeremy [Greenwood, one of the Reformers] wanted to know if I wanted to share in their success," Charles Perrottet said. "I said, I have a full-time job. I didn't want to be paid. I said, you can continue to pay Anita [Perrottet's wife] and look after her."
Icac is investigating whether Nassif paid $2m in an undeclared political donation to a group of Liberal-aligned conservative men known as the Reformers, including Greenwood and Christian Ellis, in the pursuit of certain political outcomes. In the first weeks of its investigation it focused on how these allegedly illegal donations were allegedly used to fund this group and stack branches with highly conservative members, and ultimately shift the Liberal party to the right.
But this week the inquiry has focused on a potentially far more serious issue from a public policy perspective: what, if anything, was done, primarily by Charles Perrottet, for the $2m from Nassif? People like Charles Perrottet are not registered lobbyists. They do not appear in ministerial diaries because meetings on "political matters" with ministers do not have to be disclosed. They can engage casually with key ministerial staff because meetings with staff don't need to be disclosed anywhere.
Icac is painstakingly testing allegations of hidden payments made to Liberal operatives allegedly for consulting, and outcomes that were either delivered or sought from the Perrottet government. Icac has gone through phone records, text messages, WhatsApp messages, mobile phone tower information, bank records, computers, tax returns and flight records, to track the movements of the key players and the money flow. They even obtained CCTV footage of the main persons of interest meeting up in a hotel.
Former building commissioner David Chandler gave evidence this week of a whisper campaign, which he believed was aimed at ministers and the media, to have him removed. Chandler, a 40-year veteran of the construction industry, is not under investigation by Icac. A former minister, Eleni Petinos, gave evidence that she believed she was "used" in that campaign. She also said she believed she was sacked precipitously by the premier and that she thought there was something else at play. Petinos is not under investigation by Icac.
We've also heard about Hills Shire Liberal councillors being disendorsed and replaced by a committee of the state executive of the Liberal party. Charles Perrottet and other Reformers occupied key positions on the committee. The old Hills council had been opposing a Toplace development at Cherrybrook. And of course Elliott lost his seat in parliament.