His first, in 2002, was prompted by a Herald investigation which revealed the then fisheries minister had attempted to solicit a $1 million donation to the ALP in order to remove planning roadblocks hampering the development of the contentious Oasis project in Liverpool.
No corruption was found, and Obeid later successfully sued the Herald.
More than a decade later, a string of further corruption inquiries found that Obeid was corrupt. In July 2013, the ICAC found that Moses and Eddie Obeid, Macdonald, and others engaged in corrupt conduct in relation to their actions involving the Mount Penny coal mining tenement over their farm “Cherrydale Park” in the Bylong Valley.
Eddie Obeid arrives at Darlinghurst court in 2016.Credit: Daniel Munoz
“Personally, I don’t give a damn,” Obeid told journalists after another three damning findings of corruption by the ICAC were handed down in June 2014. The reports related to his family’s secret interests in Circular Quay café leases, a health company, as well as water licences obtained for his family farm.
In his final report into those inquiries, ICAC assistant commissioner Anthony Whealy, KC, a former Supreme Court judge, found that Eddie Obeid, instead of acting for the good of the community as he had claimed, had been involved in “the more mundane, indeed grubby, pursuit of improving his family’s financial position. No amount of window dressing or pretence can disguise this unpleasant reality.”
The Labor kingpin’s unpleasant reality occurred in December 2016 when he was sentenced to five years in jail, with a minimum non-parole period of three years, over his family’s secret interest in the café leases.
Cherrydale Park, bought for $3.65 million in September 2007 by the Obeid family.
As a result of yet another ICAC inquiry into the Obeid family’s secret shareholding in infrastructure company Australian Water Holdings, Eddie Obeid will face another trial over that matter next year.
Earlier this year, the NSW Crime Commissioner, Michael Barnes, said, “It’s a sad but unavoidable conclusion” that pursuing a criminal confiscation case against the Obeids over the $30 million they received for their interest in the coal leases was not feasible.
Read the full article here
