Underbelly (19 page)

The corruption network came crashing down after selected officers were confronted with evidence of their corruption, gathered through electronic surveillance and telephone taps. Their choice was to become undercover double agents for the commission to avoid charges themselves. A case of setting a thief to catch a thief.

And no matter where the Commission headed in its inquiry into the JTF, the signposts of corruption invariably
seemed to point at Donaldson and Lysaught, who were close friends and had followed tandem career paths.

Donaldson, called the ‘Smiling Assassin' by his troops, proved a man of hugely contrasting opinions. He privately attacked the Royal Commission while publicly endorsing it, then went running to the Supreme Court on a failed mission to suppress his name and the allegations against him.

He denied all knowledge of any officers being corrupt then resigned (before he was pushed), claiming his reputation had been butchered beyond belief.

Arrogant and derisive about the Commission when it was first announced, Donaldson showed his true colours in a conversation with a colleague who had ‘rolled over' and was wearing a recording device.

‘The whole fucking thing's frog shit,' Donaldson ranted. ‘This is a hundred million (dollars to run). It's the WOFTAM Commission (Waste of fucking time and money). Any team of fucking galoots could have gone up to the Cross. It's been going on for 100 years.'

To the delight of the public gallery at the Royal Commission, Donaldson's WOFTAM tirade came immediately after he had been in the witness box under oath.

He was asked: ‘And there's never been an occasion when you've done anything that a fellow policeman would take as a want of support for the Royal Commission by way of word or deed. Is that correct?'

Donaldson: ‘Correct.'

Counsel for the Commission: ‘Would you listen to this tape?'

Donaldson could blink and swallow but he couldn't run and he couldn't hide. But he lied. A diehard believer in the
quaint idea of the ‘big blue gang' being invulnerable to any investigation if police remained staunchly united, he repeatedly denied everything. But it was too late.

The gallows for Donaldson and Lysaught, the police commissioner's chief of staff, was built on the plea of former officer Paul Deaves, who rolled over to become JTF7.

Deaves broke down in the witness box as he shamefacedly detailed his corrupt behaviour, including a massive $100,000 scam on a drug dealer. He wasn't alone in reaching for the tissues.

By the time he had finished detailing the widespread corruption in the task force, the sixteen colleagues he'd implicated were in tears as well as they saw their careers crash and burn.

Deaves became a weapon of mass destruction for the Commission, unhesitatingly naming fellow officers that he said acted corruptly, including Donaldson and Lysaught.

He came into the hearing through the ‘roll-over' door reserved for officers who had changed sides and his testimony burned holes in his previous dodgy evidence.

He admitted he was corrupt, had accepted bribes in the past and had direct evidence linking other police with bribes from criminals. And he was willing to tell all.

Deaves said his teenage daughter had begged him to tell the truth in the witness box, whatever the consequences.

‘You're a policeman, dad,' she had said. ‘You've sworn to tell the truth.' So he did. His colleagues, facing the sack over charges ranging from theft to intimidating witnesses to perjury and drug dealing, thought he should have stuck to the adage that children should be seen but not heard.

Deaves' testimony was poignant, partly because it had to be so personally treacherous. He was a long-time personal friend of Donaldson and Lysaught, who was godfather to Deaves' son. JTF6, another officer who rolled over, was also a close friend of all three men.

That intimacy turned to ashes as the pair saved their own hides by switching sides and working undercover for the Commission. Deaves recalled the past and JTF6 captured the present on a recording device he wore into Lysaught's office to tape conversations.

Deaves revealed his and Lysaught's involvement in a scam that extracted $100,000 from a slow-thinking cocaine dealer and a midnight rendezvous on a winter's night to distribute the spoils.

The pay-off came when two police cars driven by officers with no known interest in nature study pulled into Koala Park, a deserted tourist attraction at Castle Hill in outer Sydney. With only gum trees as witnesses, a white cloth bag containing $44,000 in bundles of $50, $20 and $10 notes was tossed from one car to Deaves in the other with the message: ‘Here's your Christmas present.'

It was actually mid-1987, not Christmas time, but the police calendar is elastic about such things.

Deaves' first reaction to the windfall was to phone Lysaught from a public phone and say: ‘Everything is sweet.'

The police in Koala Park and the dozen or so others in on the rort were the dark side of Santa Claus. They were splitting $100,000 in cash they had conned out of a drug importer called John Murphy.

Murphy, big in cocaine, thought he was buying his way out of being charged over millions of dollars worth of drug
importations. He was a little optimistic. As Deaves would later reveal in the witness box, the task force had no brief on Murphy and could do nothing to help him – but the temptation to relieve him of $100,000 was too much to ignore.

Murphy's $100,000 offer was relayed to New South Wales drug officers Peter George and Chris Hannay who in turn, the Commission was told, passed it along to Lysaught and other senior police. Lysaught was named as the mastermind of the extortion scheme and a corruption conduit to his friend Donaldson. They even set up ‘think tanks' to find a way to make it work.

‘During the course of discussions with Mr Lysaught it was decided that, as we didn't have a brief on Murphy anyway, we were not in a position to charge him,' Deaves said. ‘There was a discussion about basically distancing ourselves from the money and Murphy. I have a recollection Mr Lysaught and myself also spoke to Dick Paynter and Brian Meredith.'

Paynter and Meredith allegedly drove the police car that arrived at the Koala Park and threw the money to Deaves – a charge they denied, along with other allegations of corrupt behaviour.

Lysaught was the bagman. He took $17,000 of Murphy's bribe for himself and another $5000 he said was for Donaldson. A total of $44,000 went to four officers with the remaining $56,000 divided between other police in the rort.

With the ghosts of his past threatening him, Lysaught decided attack was the best defence at his first appearance before the Commission. It didn't last. He had come into the hearing like a brass band. He went out like a tin whistle.

He castigated the media for pursuing him and protested his innocence until counsel assisting, John Agius, dropped the stunning news that Lysaught's office had been infiltrated and recording devices planted in it.

‘Mr Lysaught, I tell you now so that you may know and think about this,' Agius said. ‘For quite some long time now (JTF6) has been assisting the Royal Commission by having meetings with people, including yourself, at a time when he was wearing a listening device.

‘The Royal Commission has those holdings and there are a large number of them and your voice features prominently. The Commission would like you to think about your position between now and the time you return to the witness box.'

The realisation hit Lysaught like a bucket of iced water. He had been sold out by a man he trusted implicitly.

Agius demanded an answer. Did Lysaught understand the situation?

It was a bitter moment for Lysaught as he whispered, ‘Yes'. Having headed down a dead end by initially denying ever seeing or hearing of any corruption during their time in the force and sticking to their story, Lysaught and Donaldson had to sit like condemned men waiting for the trapdoor to drop as a black cloud of allegations burst over them.

Surveillance and bugging, modern policing's best tools, were being used to rid the modern force of some of its dinosaurs. Other tapes recorded secretly in Lysaught's office and played for Justice Wood revealed officers pledging to hold their ranks at the Royal Commission.

Deaves also said Lysaught had shared a $10,000 bribe with other corrupt police for not opposing a bail application by a Central Coast heroin seller.

‘Rollover' officers told of Lysaught instigating an aggressive twelve- hour interrogation of a woman at Sydney airport and bullying her into signing a partly false statement he had compiled about her conspiring to import drugs even though none had been found on her person or in her luggage.

Deaves said other officers involved in the case had met to go over the details to ensure ‘their statements dovetailed to make it look like it had actually happened.' The woman was subsequently jailed.

The allegations against Donaldson mounted until they were a noose around his neck. Being fingered for receiving money from the drug raid was just the start of his problems. Eye witnesses said he had also assaulted a man involved in heroin trafficking and then colluded with other officers to lie about the case in court.

By this stage the supposedly rock-solid task force that Donaldson was relying on for support was fracturing fast. Realising their past sins were surfacing and confronted by Haken's forensic memory and recorded evidence, guilty officers rushed to ‘roll over' and tell their stories to the Commission to reduce the looming penalties.

At one stage former squad members JTF1, JTF6, JTF7, JTF8 and JTF 9 were lining up behind Haken to give evidence. Then came J10 and J11. In poker it was a straight.

It was JTF8 who revealed that Donaldson had assaulted an Asian cocaine dealer during a raid on a house in
Kirrawee in Sydney's south. It happened after police tracked imported heroin (packed into a car axle) to the house.

JTF8 said the raid was more violent than he'd expected despite the fact the suspects found living at the house had shown little resistance.

‘It was a hard entry. The Asians living there were secured violently and pushed and thrown to the ground,' JTF8 said. He admitted grabbing a man named Truang and slapping him before dragging him into the yard, where other police converged on him.

‘I recall the man (Truang) being hit across the face two or three times by another police officer,' JTF8 said. ‘Hardhanded slaps to the side of the face. The man (a Vietnamese) was screaming and wailing as he was being bashed in the backyard.'

Asked which officer had hit the man JTF8 replied: ‘Detective Sergeant Ray Donaldson.'

The assault had also been witnessed by people next door. Unluckily for the cops, one of the witnesses was a retired fireman and lay preacher with an irresistible urge to tell the truth. ‘We didn't know he was watching what went on,' JTF8 said feelingly.

The people in the Kirrawee house were charged with conspiracy to supply heroin. But the neighbour willingly gave evidence of having seen Truang assaulted. To overcome the problem the police involved had a ‘scrum down' and decided to deny the allegations en masse.

‘Under oath I denied these allegations as did the other police involved,' JTF8 admitted.

Royal Commissioner:
What other police denied those allegations?

JTF8:
Mr Donaldson was among them.

RC:
Did you speak to your police colleagues about what evidence you would give about the matter in court?

JTF8:
Yes. We decided that the assault would be denied.

JTF8 said Donaldson agreed with the decision to lie to the court. Other former colleagues also rushed to kick Donaldson's battered reputation to death.

Evidence was given that he had once helped dispose of a police car severely damaged when Lysaught hit a parked vehicle while trying to change lanes after a drinking session in inner Sydney. Lysaught had called Donaldson, who told him to hide the vehicle until morning. Donaldson would later decide the car was so damaged it should be dumped so JTF6 reported it stolen.

As the allegations mounted, an increasingly jittery Donaldson verged on a state of shock. He knew there was plenty more where that came from. For instance, the Commission heard that Donaldson had illegally intervened in a case being heard by Royal Commissioner James Wood when he was a trial judge.

It revolved around a raid on a Five Dock home in Sydney's inner-west and the arrest of two heroin dealers whose names were suppressed. The raid, Operation Bing, was so farcically handled it could have been a script for a comic book.

Even though cocaine was genuinely found on the premises, the raid was ‘chaotic', according to Deaves. He said the male heroin dealer had been assaulted and police
were swearing and screaming at the top of their voices and using language like ‘sit down, you fucking moll' to the man's partner. Unfortunately for them, the house was being bugged – and the tapes hadn't been turned off. The rogue cops realised too late that all their swearing, bullying and violence was on tape.

Deaves said he had taken this problem to Detective Sergeant Rob Milner, the JFT deputy leader, but Milner refused to help and wanted the tapes played in their entirety in court. In other words, he seemed to be the only character in the pantomime with any idea of what proper policing was about.

Donaldson was next on Deaves' list to ask for help. ‘He told me we would have to get rid of the tape because it could not be played,' Deaves recalled.

After waiting until Milner went on holidays, Deaves and JTF 20 stole the tape and edited out the troublesome words. JTF 20 burnt the original. But in court the two dealers complained about being assaulted and queried the authenticity of the modified tape played in the trial.

Justice Wood, then the trial judge, ordered that the tapes be tested by experts for authenticity and that Legal Aid provide enough money for ten hours of examination.

Deaves, embarrassed at giving evidence to a Royal Commissioner about the way he had been duped as judge, admitted they had thwarted Woods' plan by putting the doctored tape at the bottom of the pile to be tested.