Hearings to heed claims of dodgy school deals
The date has been set for corruption commission hearings over an alleged Victorian education fraud ring.
The hearings will be presented with claims that a senior Victorian education official gave contracts to private companies operated by his family or friends.
Fairfax Media revealed the existence of a multimillion-dollar funding program called "banker schools" late last year.
The media outlet published details of a confidential Education Department audit which labelled the funding program a “shadow financial system” which allowed senior bureaucrats to take public funds from schools and use them however they wished.
The reports said there was zero accountability.
Allegations have been made that up to $28 million was deposited in banker schools across Victoria, where it was used to pay for unauthorised overseas travel, car leases and alcohol-fuelled conferences.
The money should have been spent on improving school facilities.
Some of Victoria's most senior education public servants will appear before Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commissioner Stephen O'Bryan QC to answer questions from counsel assisting Ian Hill, QC.
IBAC says it will seek to discover how schools were chosen to join the ‘special’ fund, details of any dealings between principals and business managers of schools, and senio public servants.
It will also look for evidence such as invoices for goods or services that did not benefit their school.
In an statement this week, IBAC said it would use the public hearings to cover “the existence of any familial relationship or other personal or business connection between, on the one hand, businesses or entities (or their directors and officers) that issued or purported to issue the banker school invoices or supply goods or services” to the department or state schools.
The watchdog also wants to know whether public servants, their family members, friends or business associates were given “direct or indirect payment” relating to the operation of a banker school or the dodgy invoices.
Education officials will be made to publicly account for the movement of funds into and out of banker schools, the payment of invoices and arrangements for the supply or “purported supply” of goods and services.
Reports say some former high-ranking education bureaucrats have already engaged criminal lawyers ahead of the inquiry.
The public hearings will start on April 27 at the County Court in William Street in Melbourne's CBD.