Page 537 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 April 1994
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Note the critical words in each of these statements, that is, "company search". It was misleading for the Minister to suggest that a company search would establish the bona fides of any person involved in VITAB. Everyone knows, except Mr Berry, it seems, that a company search tells you almost nothing about the individuals involved in a corporation. A general company search in Vanuatu, such as the one purported to have been done by Price Waterhouse, gives the names of directors, who can be either individuals or companies. If it is an exempt company under Vanuatu law, a search will not even tell you who the directors or shareholders are. That is because Vanuatu discourages people from checking too closely any companies that are set up in one of the world's best known tax havens. A Department of Foreign Affairs briefing paper says that Vanuatu's status as a tax haven became widely recognised in 1970. The briefing paper states:
In addition to the absence of income, corporate, capital gains, withholding, inheritance taxes and capital account and foreign exchange controls, Vanuatu law protects all offshore account holders with secrecy provisions.
A company search in Vanuatu would not tell you that one of the people who negotiated the deal with ACTTAB, Peter Bartholomew, was convicted in 1981 and 1982 in Victoria on charges of conducting a place used for gaming and use of premises for betting. Mr Bartholomew took part in negotiations with ACTTAB on behalf of VITAB in July 1993 at ACTTAB's headquarters in Dickson. Just 12 months earlier, and only five miles down the road, he was arrested in the Hyatt Hotel in company with one of Australia's most notorious SP bookmakers, Alan Tripp, his brother-in-law.
Surely alarm bells would have rung for Mr Berry had he bothered to check this man's background. In fact, Bartholomew and Tripp were arrested together in Victoria on a number of occasions. The activities of the pair attracted several references in the Costigan royal commission's final report. If this Minister had done his homework, he would have learnt that the person who initially approached the Queensland TAB on behalf of VITAB was none other than Peter Bartholomew. All he had to do was ring the Queensland TAB and ask. So while he does not appear on any company records, Mr Bartholomew was actively involved in negotiations on behalf of VITAB, and he was therefore relevant to a check of its bona fides.
If this was not bad enough, one of the directors of VITAB and a signatory to the contract with ACTTAB, Cornelius McMahon, was charged in 1988 in Victoria with "suffer betting" and "keep control of premises for the use of betting". Cornelius McMahon, who signed the contract, according to a recent Sydney Morning Herald article is also a mate of Alan Tripp's. This association goes back to at least 1985. If the Minister had followed up on ACTTAB's recommendation last July, he would have known that his TAB had done a deal with people associated with SP bookmaking. Yet Mr Berry tried to create the impression that the bona fides of VITAB had been checked and checked again and were totally satisfactory. Some company search, Minister!
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