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Former assistant tax commissioner Nick Petroulias and his partner, lawyer Despina Bakis, have been hit with fraud charges for obtaining a financial advantage by deception and falsifying documents.
A lengthy inquiry by the Independent Commission Against Corruption in 2022 found that Petroulias, Bakis and others had engaged in serious corrupt conduct, including obtaining money by deception.
The ICAC’s Operation Skyline found that Gows, a company secretly controlled by Petroulias, had an option to purchase five Awabakal Local Aboriginal Land Council (ALALC) properties around Newcastle and Lake Macquarie.
His partner, Bakis, who was acting for both Gows and the land council, was alleged to have prepared false contractual documents between the parties. Petroulias is alleged to have improperly altered land council board meeting minutes and participated in preparing the sham agreements.
Richard Green, the former deputy chairman of the ALALC, has been charged with a number of fraud offences as well as two charges of misconduct in public office.
In its final report, the ICAC found that Petroulias received more than $1 million from the fraudulent scheme, whereby the option was later on-sold to another entity, with Petroulias receiving the money rather than the ALALC. Bakis and Green also received some of the $1 million.
Petroulias was found to be the “controlling mind” behind Gows, which had as a director Johan Latervere, who had died 10 months before he was appointed to the company. Other directors told the inquiry they had no idea they had been appointed.
“Mr Petroulias had created and falsified documents in order to fabricate its corporate history and conceal his own involvement in the company,” ICAC Commissioner Peter Hall found.
One of the crucial documents regarding the proposed sale was signed by Latervere on March 20, 2014. Latervere had already been dead for a year.
The commission found that “Mr Petroulias stole Mr Latervere’s identity for use in connection with Gows”.
It was also alleged that Petroulias orchestrated the alteration of ALALC minutes to reflect a proposed sale to Gows.
The commission held that Bakis “lacked any semblance of credibility as a witness. She was unreliable and dishonest.”
It also found that Bakis had “improperly” obtained a Tasmanian driver’s licence in the name of Daphne Diomedes, “using a falsely secured passport in that name”.
Despite serious corruption findings being made against her in 2022, Bakis still appears on the Law Society’s register as the principal of Point Law in Enfield.
The Operation Skyline report also noted that in 2008, Petroulias “was convicted of two serious dishonesty offences while employed by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), for which he served a term of imprisonment.”
In October 2014, he was made bankrupt and “he remained an undischarged bankrupt for the entire period of his dealings with the ALALC”, the report noted.
There was an awkward moment during the ICAC inquiry in July 2018 when Petroulias, in prison greens, appeared before the corruption inquiry via a link from Silverwater jail. The undischarged bankrupt had been arrested in Burwood while driving his luxury BMW, which was owned by a dummy company fronted by an associate.
Police said they found counterfeit banknotes in the glove box. Petroulias, who had changed his name to Michael Felson, handed over a current NZ driver’s licence in the name of Nicholas James Piers.
Following a referral by the ICAC to the director of public prosecutions, court attendance notices were recently served on Petroulias, Bakis and Green. The trio will face court on July 23.
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