When a judge is told the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP) has no objections to an application for access to confidential transcripts and then learns that the application hasn’t been served on the CDPP, it’s a revelation certain to impede rather than hasten an applicant’s progress.
So it turned out on Monday this week when lawyers for colourful construction industry identity and alleged money launderer Michael Teplitsky came before the NSW Supreme Court judge Ashley Black.
Teplitsky’s lawyers were before the Corporations List judge this week because the transcripts he seeks are in the possession of Deloitte duo Sal Algeri and Tim Norman in their capacities as the liquidators of the notorious Plutus Payroll Group.
As has been widely reported, Teplitsky is alleged to have helped launder almost $25 million that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) claims was paid to associates of the alleged Plutus tax-fraud co-conspirators as hush money after the associates threatened to expose the scheme.
Teplitsky denies any wrongdoing and is strenuously defending the allegations.
As part of his defence he wants to know what scheme participants like the currently incarcerated Simon Anquetil might have told Algeri and Norman, though it wasn’t clear at Monday’s hearing whether the transcripts are from confidential interviews the liquidators conducted with Anquetil and the other accused co-conspirators or are records of public examinations. Algeri and Norman did not respond to inquiries.
In September 2021 the liquidators applied to the Supreme Court for orders allowing them to publicly examine Anquetil in private, a proposal so heinously opposed to the principles of open justice that it was given short shrift by the judge at the time, who happened to be his honour, Ashley Black.
Teplitsky’s barrister Stefan Balafoutis told the court that the liquidators had no objection to the trancripts being made available as long as they remained confidential.
That was confirmed by counsel appearing for the liquidators.
Balafoutis then told Justice Ashley Black that the liquidators had advised his instructors that the CDPP had been notified of the application and was also content for the transcripts to be provided, conditional on them remaining confidential.
All seemed well until the judge asked if the application had actually been served on the CDPP.
It had not the court heard, a revelation that prompted Justice Black, who has some familiarity with the matter, to inform the parties that he wasn’t going to assume the CDPP’s position wouldn’t change after it actually saw the contents of the application.
When advised by Balafoutis that Teplitsky’s legal team had a guillotine order hanging over them the judge relented in so much as he made the orders sought but stayed their affect for a week to give the applicant’s time to serve the CDPP and confirm that no objections would be forthcoming.
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