Who Shredded What And When Has Memories Racing At Icac
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday April 23, 1991
When two Esanda Finance employees heard that the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) had raided the offices of their competitors, they set about destroying documents which might incriminate their company.
Mr Les Cross, an Esanda credit control officer, told the ICAC yesterday that he and Mr Alex McMaster heard in November last year that the offices of AGC and Custom Credit had been raided by the ICAC.
Mr Cross said he asked Mr McMaster, who was his acting supervisor, whether he should shred company faxes which showed that Esanda had requested mercantile agents to obtain confidential government information. Mr McMaster said he should.
However, Mr Cross's evidence, which came at the close of yesterday's proceedings, was the fourth version during the course of the day dealing with who at Esanda had shredded what and when, and whom they had told about the shredding.
The confusion started when the first witness of the day, Mr Edward Bartolo, an Esanda finance officer, said he had a phone call last Friday from a mercantile agent asking him to tell Mr Cross to destroy the confidential report the agent had sent him.
When he called Mr Cross into his office to explain, Mr Cross told him that his superior, Mr Andy Wills, knew all about it. When Mr Bartolo confronted Mr Wills, Mr Wills said he didn't know about it, but later on Friday he told Mr Bartolo he did know what it all meant but that Mr Bartolo needn't worry about it.
Mr Wills, the assistant to the state manager of credit control, then came into the witness box and said he had initially told Mr Bartolo on Friday that he had instructed Les Cross to destroy documents from Combined Mercantile in June 1989. However, he said his memory improved over the weekend and he recalled he'd never asked Mr Cross to shred documents. At this stage, Assistant Commissioner Adrian Roden, QC, commented: "Unless I were afflicted with some disease of aging, I would expect to remember it (the instruction to shred documents) all my life ... I cannot imagine that I would ever mistakenly believe I had done so," he said.
Mr Roden also noted that Mr Bartolo had made no reference in his evidence to any conversation with Mr Wills about Mr Wills having asked Mr Cross to destroy documents.
After a third witness was unable to clarify Friday's comings and goings, Mr Cross was called to the box.
When he was asked about yesterday morning's conversation with Mr Wills, he at first said that Mr Wills had not asked him about any instructions to shred documents. He later said Mr Wills had mentioned shredding documents but that they had discussed the November shredding incident in which Mr McMaster was involved and not any June 1989 shredding or instruction to shred.
The hearing resumes on Monday.
© 1991 Sydney Morning Herald
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