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Premier Ben Carroll is refusing to hand back donations to Labor from Big Build subcontractors after major cross-border police raids over allegations $25,000 in NRL tickets and corporate hospitality was offered to secure CFMEU backing.
Victoria Police’s Taskforce Hawk on Wednesday morning co-ordinated raids in Victoria and Queensland as authorities probe allegations a Big Build subcontractor, and Labor donor, offered inducements in July to a senior Queensland CFMEU official to obtain the union’s backing to set up its operations in the sunshine state.
The raids targeting Victorian company Top Up Labour come two months after another ALP donor and Big Build labour hire firm, BK Labour, pleaded guilty to separate financial crime charges laid by Taskforce Hawk.
Top Up and BK both donated several thousand dollars to Victorian Labor’s 2022 election campaign as two of a number of Big Build subcontractors directed by the CFMEU to donate to the ALP and, particularly, to recently promoted minister Luba Grigorovitch. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Grigorovitch.
With the CFMEU’s backing, both firms turned over hundreds of millions of dollars on the Big Build between 2022 and the end of 2025.
Four sources with knowledge of the donations and latest allegations, but who are not authorised to talk publicly, said the donations are part of an entrenched pattern of multiple labour hire firms seeking to please the CFMEU to win union backing on major taxpayer-funded infrastructure projects.
In addition to Top Up and BK, at least two other Labor hire firms or Big Build subcontractors, including one with gangland figure Mick Gatto on their payroll, donated to the Victorian ALP at the urging of the CFMEU.
In a statement, a state government spokesperson declined to say why Carroll would not return the donations but highlighted his role in calling a royal commission into the building industry.
A Labor Party spokesperson said: “The donations in question were made years prior to these allegations being made.”
The investigation into Top Up commenced in the middle of this year while Hawk was investigating different allegations that a former bikie boss’s industrial relations company set up had sought to corrupt serving Victorian CFMEU officials. That inquiry led to the raid of the CFMEU’s Victorian headquarters a fortnight ago and is ongoing.
While conducting that investigation, Hawk uncovered Top Up’s plans to expand into Queensland. To do so, police suspect the firm was seeking to obtain an enterprise bargaining agreement approved by the CFMEU’s Queensland branch.
Hawk’s investigation is focused into whether Top Up’s effort to win EBA backing and other union support may have involved an improper offer of NRL tickets and corporate hospitality totalling $25,000.
The search warrant served on the CFMEU during the raid of its Brisbane office by Queensland detectives working with Taskforce Hawk identified Top Up Labour and a leading corporate hospitality provider as entities of interest.
In Victoria, police arrested Top Up Labour’s two owners and quizzed them over what Taskforce Hawk described in a statement as “allegations … of a Victorian-based labour hire company providing corrupting benefits to current Queensland-based CFMEU officials to influence them in the performance of their duties”.
Neither owner has been charged with corruption offences, although one of the pair was charged with the relatively minor criminal offence of “make false document” and released on bail.
A CFMEU spokesperson said the union has no agreement with Top Up.
“The company approached the CFMEU looking for an agreement and the union declined to make an agreement with the company,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
“The CFMEU continues to co-operate with the police. No CFMEU staff member has been charged at this stage. The CFMEU will continue to monitor the situation and are conducting our own investigation.”
On Wednesday, the Hawk-led multi-agency investigation also sought information from senior CFMEU Queensland official Hoani Edwards.
Edwards is a person of interest in the inquiry, although this masthead is not suggesting he has engaged in any unlawful conduct. In Victoria, Hawk continues to closely scrutinise the actions CFMEU Victorian organisers, with more arrests expected.
The operation also highlighted how police in both Victoria and Queensland are gathering information not only for possible prosecutions but for the separate commissions of inquiry into the building industry called by the two states.
The Queensland detectives working with Taskforce Hawk are assigned to the Crisafulli government’s Commission of Inquiry into the CFMEU and Misconduct in the Construction Industry.
The raids are among the most consequential law enforcement action since the Building Bad scandal broke two years ago because they involve allegations of efforts to compromise serving CFMEU union officials in two state branches ostensibly under the control of an administration appointed in August 2024 as the Albanese government vowed to clean up the union.
In a separate development, The Age can also reveal that Taskforce Hawk and Victoria Police’s cyber crime division on Wednesday charged Top Up’s operations manager, Chris Aggelou, with distributing intimate images of the girlfriend of a former CFMEU official.
The ex-official’s phone data was stolen from CFMEU headquarters and distributed in a mass anonymous leak in July after he was falsely accused in construction industry circles of assisting authorities to probe CFMEU corruption.
On Tuesday, police arrested and quizzed a former CFMEU delegate over allegedly distributing the images as part of a suspected campaign by unknown CFMEU and underworld figures to harm the ex-organiser.
In a statement released on Wednesday afternoon, Hawk Detective Inspector Ross Mitchell said the taskforce remained focused on “eradicating criminality – regardless of what form it takes – from the construction industry”.
“Those who are in the industry deserve to work in a fair and safe environment at all times. Taskforce detectives will also continue to work closely with other agencies, including our law enforcement partners interstate, to ensure all those involved in this type of offending are fully investigated.”
With Eleanor Campbell and Felicity Caldwell
Nick McKenzie is an Age investigative journalist who has three times been named the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year. A winner of 20 Walkley Awards, including the Gold Walkley, he investigates politics, business, foreign affairs and criminal justice.Connect via email.From our partners
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