Today in Melbourne Craig Thomson faced the court for what he hoped would be the final verdict in his long, dramatic, and extremely expensive fight against charges of fraud that amounted to less than $25,000
Meanwhile Kathy Jackson the woman who claims to have blown the whistle on his spending that is in question has been dragging out her court case where she faces civil action for approximately $1.4 Million.
Alarmingly Victoria Police have yet to lay charges against Jackson but have spent countless hundreds of thousands of dollars pursuing Thomson to this point.
You could be forgiven considering the amounts of money involved that Victorian Police would probably turn a blind eye to a drug lord like Pablo Escobar and spend vast amounts of taxpayer dollars chasing the guy sitting on his couch with a bong in front of the TV.
Look out Wilfred
Once again the charges against Thomson were cut back even further as Thomson was found not guilty of 49 charges. However Judge Carolyn Douglas has found Thomson guilty of 13 charges of theft.
Thomson will have to wait until Wednesday for sentencing to know if he’ll be able to spend Xmas with his family.
It is worth noting a few things however. Firstly the charges Thomson has been found guilty of add up to a grand total of approximately $3,500. This is well below 1% of the figure being touted when this whole trial by media began, and it is less than half of what Tony Abbott expects taxpayers to cough up to promote his book.
It is also worth noting that all of the charges relate to cash withdrawals from ATM’s using the credit card. All of the charges related to signed credit card slips and credit card expenditure Thomson has been found not guilty of.
There has been talk in the press already of Thomson “getting off on a technicality”, and I can understand why some would spin it that way. However if we are talking about technicalities we must also remember that Thomson was arrested without a legitimate arrest warrant, and he was found guilty previously of charges that had been allowed to be reworded by police once the opportunity to defend himself against the new charges had passed.
We will now have to wait to see what sentence Thomson is given on Wednesday.
Thomson, it ain’t over just yet
Image Fairfax
Meanwhile in a prison cell in NSW, Michael Williamson must be shaking his head in disbelief.
Williamson is currently serving five years for acts of fraud against the Health Services Union that amounted to just under $1 Million. Nobody questions the fact that Williamson needed to be punished for what he did, after all anybody who defrauded money from lowly paid workers deserves what they get.
However it is clear that the NSW Police don’t think so, certainly not while we have a Coalition government in charge in NSW and George Brandis on the phone trying to push things along to his liking.
Williamson was hunted down like a rabid dog for less than $1 Million while it seems others involved were let off the hook despite taking vastly more than Williamson.
As NSW police were mounting their case against Williamson others involved were ensuring that their immunity from criminal prosecution was signed off on.
Last Thursday former HSU procurement Manager Cheryl McMillan was ordered by a NSW court to repay the union $3.7 million, including interest and legal costs. Union supplier Alf Downing was also ordered to pay $4.3 million to the union including interest and costs.
You may recognise these names from some my previous articles, I have been calling for action against them for a long time now as the police seemed to be ignoring them and the press seemed uninterested. Alf Downing you may remember even owns himself an island resort as I reported back in January last year.
Both of these cases are for approximately a quarter the dollar figures of the charges against Williamson.
So why the lack of interest?
It turns out the police had in fact granted Ms McMillan and Mr Downing immunity from criminal prosecution so that they would spill the beans on the man they suspected of taking around 15% of their combined takings. You could be forgiven for thinking it should have been the other way around however this is how justice works under Coalition supervision it seems.
As for Richard Hew the other supplier suspected of acquiring vast amounts of members it seems the police have no interest whatsoever in pursuing him as they already have their man So much for justice.
It would appear that a link to the Labor Party has the miraculous ability to turn a small fish into a big fish when the illusion of justice is being presided over by those in the Liberal Party.
Did I hear someone say witch hunt?
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I really admire your resilience Peter, personally, all this is just making me sick to the guts
Nice to know Craig might be the man I thought him to be a couple decades ago.
Just a few points Peter
Nice Wilfred reference.
$3500… That’s the figure the SMH, ABC and Guardian are yet to report.
You’ve skillfully glossed over the theft charges. He may not have committed credit card fraud but simple theft from the HSU holds water.
There’s a typo where you left a c out of once.
oh, and this line doesn’t scan right ” Both of these cases are for approximately a quarter of the charges against Williamson. ” How about “each of these cases are for monetary gain 4 times what Williamson was convicted of”?
Still luv ur wurk though.
As there were no rules saying Thomson could no withdraw cash how could he be guilty of theft.
terrific work Peter.I put a comment on Bob Ellis Table talk.
Cheers John, yeah they are all saying less than $5K
I’m not meaning to gloss over the theft charges, if I honest I’ve been at work all day and som I’m not completely on top of the details of those charges so I will be going into them further perhaps when I’ve had a chance to look at them closer.
It strikes me as odd that if the credit card is allowed to be used by him for anything except apparently withdrawing cash.
More to come I suspect
Justice in Australia is unaffordable for the ordinary citizen. That is the core of the problem Thomson has faced from the day Kathy Jackson handed over her fraudulent allegations against him to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Thomson could not afford a jury trial which would have allowed him to contest all of the allegations that he spent union money on non-union activities. A jury trial would take over a month, perhaps longer, because it involves the calling of witnesses by both parties. Thomson would have been able to call on many witnesses from those who had worked with him and come to trust him. Such a trial costs millions of dollars. Big corporations are happy to engage in such trials because they are tax deductible. Thomson is not so flush with cash. In fact he has had to borrow heavily. To get as far as he has on appeal, has cost him thousands and made him restrict himself – and his legal team – to arguments based on matters of law. These are arcane and boring. The mainstream media don’t tell you this. They just exploit it to make their stories more salacious and sensational.
Some of them have no idea of the reasons why such “cheap” trials are conducted this way. Note that Ben Schneiders (Age) and Brad Norington (Australian) have not been given this trial to cover. Instead, we have people like Samantha Maiden (Pyne’s great pal), Ean Higgins, Pia Ackerman and other light weights on the case.
The cost is undoubtedly why we are reading the same allegations against him again and again from the prosecution, which the superficial mainstream media is so happy to repeat. Imagine the uproar from the mainstream media and the shock-jocks (who have aroused the contempt and ridicule of the majority of the population against him) if a judgment were to be made that he is innocent, that he was set up by malevolent people who wanted to stop his attempts to end the corruption in Branches 1 and 3 of the Victorian HSU!
Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights opens with the statement “All are equal before the law”. Not in Oz. Is Thomson being accorded equality with James Packer before the law? He isn’t even being accorded equality with Kathy Jackson before the law!!
The level of corruption is astounding..
So the finally the clever dick strategy is shown to be legally bankrupt? IA and wixxyleak commentators need to make a huge apology to Craig Thomson for continually encouraging him along this entirely predictable path of legal suicide. Stop bleating about News Limited and the Liberals. Craig did this to himself accompanied by the cheers of the peanut gallery here and on IA. Everyone of you said how brilliant his lawyer was for not contesting the evidence, everyone of you is now shown to be wrong.
The judge has indicated she may increase his custodial sentence, I am expecting this will in fact happen on Wednesday.
In the ’70’s I worked for a month selling encyclopedias door to door in Canberra. It was an interesting experience – not that I was ever paid for any of my 10 leads but I did win a very nice bottle of plonk for making the first sale one night. The award for making two sales in one night was said to be a ‘couple of girls’. I’m not sure how that was to be squared away in the books but it seemed like a good idea at the time. And the point is…hmmm well in business all sorts of things are considered acceptable without being illegal – dodgy – maybe, bad taste – sure, unethical – absolutely, but not illegal.
Little grey rabbit, you don’t read do you? MOst charges were dropped and the others amount to a minor petty cash problem – $700 a year over 5 years, and conviction still based on no facts in evidence.
Kathy Jackson said that it was normal to withdraw cash so why the continued political convictions.
And no-one encouraged him on any folly, he still didn’t commit any crime because no money was actually taken from anyone, it was his credit card and the judges seem to be making rules that didn’t exist.
Love your work wixxy,but would you care to comment on what the judge said about the reason she dropped the charges?It appears that the only reason she did was that the prosecution made a balls up somewhere.
Clever dick strategy?
I think the point you miss is that if his lawyer argued the evidence on each charge it would be a trial that lasted for months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps over a million that Thomson didn’t have. QC’s don’t tend to give up months of theirs and their staffs time for free.
Craig chose the best legal defence that his budget allowed him to have and the charges that totalled over $500K have now come down to around $3,500, the hundreds of charges are now down to 13. That’s not too bad.
As News Ltd and Coalition have ignored the judge is legally obliged to give that warning at the start of every appeal, legally obliged, it is a matter of law and had she not done it the whole case would be dismissed. It is in no way and indication of intent, it is an indication of a possible outcome.
Thanks, the charges were dropped for the reasons I pointed out in my previous post on the matter http://wixxyleaks.com/the-waiting-craig-thomsons-appeal-all-over-bar-the-waiting/
There was no fraud, his name was on the card and he was authorised to use it and the money was paid to the bank. Any question over what it was spent should have always been a civil matter not a criminal matter as he was authorised. There was also no deception as items that were spent on were not claimed as anything other than what they were.
Everyone should write to the new Victorian police minister asking why the police are not investigating Jackson and the rest? Why the police gave immunity to people who received 3 & 4 million? Why they stripped searched Thomson? Why the warrant? Who contacted who in a political sense?
We should be demanding answers due to how the case was run, how Thomson was persecuted, used, slandered, harassed by media, and who interfered to manipulate the system.
The new Labor government should be having an investigation to get to the bottom of this to ensure our public resources were not used by politicians to destroy an opponent. police told by whom to pursue it a certain way?
The HSU members should be asking questions to the new Labor government to investigate the old government and release all records of conversations, documents and what ever else in the public interest.
This should not be over and it is time like Thomson has, that the Liberals, the police and anyone else involved should be held to account. This was all politics rather than morals or ethics. Time to pay the piper LNP.
is there any more forms of appeal?
Pia Ackerman in the Australian, according to headlines, says Thomson may spend Christmas in jail, as the it was found, he stole money to pay for prostitutes. Do not recall seeing that.
I believe so
It is in reference to the cash withdrawals. The judge said it didn’t matter if the cash was spent at Bunnings or prostitutes. Given that it was cash there is no evidence at all of where it was spent. Ackerman is adding 2 and 2 and coming up with 36,473…
ABC reporting that Thomson will be sentenced around 2:30pm. ABC reporting that judge suggesting fine of 20K and jail sentence may be over the top due to the amount, but pros want jail sentence for 3,500. WTF are the pros on?
How doe prostitutes get into the argument. Suspect being less than $5000, jail option not available.
“How doe prostitutes get into the argument.”
Good question Florence nee Fedup. I only just read this in the Australian
“Victorian County Court judge Carolyn Douglas today said she found it “regrettable” that the prosecution had poorly framed charges of obtaining financial advantage by deception against Thomson, as he had clearly deceived the Health Services Union by using its credit cards to withdraw cash which he spent on prostitutes and other personal expenses.”
I thought he had allowed the charges to be presented, but had claimed they were untrue. Wixxy has explained before the difference, I probably haven’t worded it quite precisely. How does a judge then use those unproven allegations in her findings? Or is the Australian being liberal here, and embellishing? In which case, does Thomson have a case against the Australian now?
Either way, with reporting like this, the “prostitutes” theme seems stuck in, and no amount of “not guilty” will seem to change that.
I also find it interesting that judge who said this ““This is a court of law, not a court of morals” appears to have filled her expunging him of the charges with a lot of moralising.
“Clearly the applicant deceived his employer.
“I don’t endorse what Mr Thomson did at all.”
Why would she throw that in? It has no bearing on the case, and, had the case been in that direction, the defense may well have proceeded quite differently .
Nowhere has it been established that Thomson misled the HSU. All seem to be in the open. The fine seems to be based on morals, not on evidence presented. Why say the family are being misled if they believe he is a honest man. Why mention family and supporters at all. I just do not feel comfortable with the decision and wording of the judges statement.
We do know that many of the wiriness used in the prosecutions evidence have been discredit badly in other courts.
At the end of the day, very few, charges remained. leaving only those of theft, of a small amount of money over a number of years. One could say, petty theft. Too small to allow prison sentence under law. Cannot help but feel, the fine is to big, the convictions do not warrant that amount.
The judge seems to be saying he was guilty of the allegations, set aside because of lack of evidence. I am confused. I though one was only guilty if convicted on the grounds of beyond reasonable doubt. Otherwise one is innocence.,
As the good judge said, if the police had a case, they had plenty of time and opportunity to get it right. The word “if” is important. Maybe there is no evidence as no crime was committed.
This is just my opinion.
I will have a post tomorrow that perhaps explains the judges commentary
Peter, if you can make sense of what has occurred, you are indeed amazing. I suspect she has allowed her own prejudice to get in the way of a professional judgement. Good luck.
Thanks Peter, I look forward to it.
Given the extremely slanted perceptions we are given on the news, it would be interesting to see it from another viewpoint.
“I think the point you miss is that if his lawyer argued the evidence on each charge it would be a trial that lasted for months”
His lawyer didnt need to argue the evidence, the prosecution has to prove the charge beyond reasonable doubt, by saying Thomson did not contest any of the evidence or any of the charges, he removed the onus on the prosecution to prove the charges. In reality, since we all know how bodgy the credit card vouchers were, probably all Thomson had to do was write to the bank and the telco and request they verify the various statements against their electronic database records.
If the problem was cost he should have ditched his Union stooge solicitor and his high flying barrister and got some local central coast solicitor who belonged to the local Liberal party, but had a strong sense of professional ethics and this would have all been over years ago.
Thomson never stood up in court and said “I did not spend union money on prostitutes, your honor. He merely said he was allowed to spend prostitutes if he wanted to.
“Any question over what it was spent should have always been a civil matter not a criminal matter as he was authorised.”
The judge made clear that had the charges been theft against the HSU, not fraud against the credit card provider, she would have convicted Thomson. But on the matter of the brothel expenditure he was not charged with stealing from the HSU, but defrauding the bank – a bizarre nonsense charge as the judge pointed out. It is so bizarre you can’t help wondering if it was done on purpose to try and persuade Thomson not to defend himself adequately.
“Given that it was cash there is no evidence at all of where it was spent. Ackerman is adding 2 and 2 and coming up with 36,473…”
Yes well, if your lawyer stands up in court and says you lied on national TV about being set up with prostitutes because he was embarrassed and ashamed, don’t expect to the judge to bend over backwards to think up possible exonerating uses for cash withdrawals.
Once a judge has declared that is their finding than one cannot argue as it if were not true. If the judge says she thinks cash was spent on prostitutes then defence has to base their case around that being a fact, whether they agree to it or not. It is not a matter of admitting to lies it is a matter of having a defence for a finding they do not agree with
Peter, did not seem to apply to the Justice Rares judgement. Completely rejected by the Opposition of the time.