Former Wagga MP Daryl Maguire will be sentenced in August. Photo: Supplied.
A secretly recorded phone call of former Wagga MP Daryl Maguire talking about a commission on a property deal proved the key piece of evidence that resulted in him being found guilty of misleading a corruption inquiry.
Mr Maguire faced criminal court in Sydney earlier this year, accused of breaking the law by giving misleading evidence to an Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) hearing into the activities of Sydney’s Canterbury City Council called Operation Dasha in 2018.
Magistrate Clare Farnan’s detailed judgement, which Region obtained this week, focused on the then sitting Wagga MP’s alleged 2016 dealings with then Canterbury councillor Michael Hawatt, who was assisting a company trying to sell a $48 million Campsie development known as ‘Harrisons’, which was across the road from Canterbury Hospital.
At the time, Mr Maguire was helping Chinese company Country Gardens look for investment opportunities, including the possible purchase of Harrisons. He claimed he was just networking and making introductions and that he didn’t expect to receive any financial benefit for this role.
In the 2018 ICAC hearings, Mr Maguire was asked if he ever attempted to do business with Mr Hawatt. He said no. The 66-year-old also denied approaching or being approached by Mr Hawatt to make money out of a business.
However, in 2016, ICAC intercepted private telephone calls between the two men that told a different story. These recordings were played in the ICAC hearing after Mr Maguire denied doing business with Mr Hawatt.
In one conversation on 9 May 2016, Mr Maguire is heard saying, “My client is mega big and got mega money.”
The two men were heard talking about the sale of a property across the road from Canterbury Hospital.
“What’s he going to give you to sell it?” Mr Maguire is heard asking.
“I think he’s going for around 1.5, 2 per cent, something like that,” Mr Hawatt replies.
Further along in the conversation, Mr Maguire is heard saying: “One point five per cent isn’t enough divided by two if you know what I’m talking about.”
Magistrate Farnan saw the conversation as evidence that Mr Maguire expected to receive half of Mr Hawatt’s commission if the sale of the property were finalised.
The prosecution calculated that the Wagga MP stood to receive about $720,000 from the deal.
“There is no question that Mr Maguire gave evidence that was inconsistent with his evidence that he did not expect any benefit,” Magistrate Farnan concluded.
The magistrate considered other reasons Mr Maguire might have given incorrect evidence to ICAC, including honest mistake, inadvertence, carelessness or misunderstanding, all of which could have been grounds for finding him not guilty.
“I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that neither of those is a reasonable possibility,” she ruled.
“Mr Maguire’s mind three days earlier had been focussed on this specific interaction between himself and Mr Hawatt. He clearly had a recollection of it. He had thought about it. He had developed a story about it that was not accurate.”
The man who represented Wagga for 19 years will now face a sentence hearing on 15 August.
Mr Maguire resigned from parliament in 2018, soon after the Operation Dasha revelations, which led to further ICAC investigations into various other dealings he’d had as a politician.
A later inquiry uncovered a secret intimate relationship he’d had with then NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and raised questions about how he obtained certain funding commitments for Wagga projects.
The Liberal Party lost the seat of Wagga in a by-election in 2018 to independent Joe McGirr, who remains in parliament.
Original Article published by Oliver Jacques on Region Riverina.
