$20m fraudster had everyone fooled

Damian O'Carrigan's double life was a complete shock to his wife Julie. Source: The Sunday Mail (Qld)

DAMIAN O'Carrigan was outwardly a devoted husband, father and a trusted manager with one of the nation's biggest firms.

He had also siphoned $20 million from his employer over more than a decade, while having secret affairs and building his own property and racing empire.

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Speaking about the incredible double life for the first time, the wife of the knockabout finance manager this week lifted the lid on one of the state's biggest frauds.

"You've got to remember that my husband was my hero," Julie O'Carrigan told The Sunday Mail, insisting she had no knowledge of the crimes.

"I knew him like the back of my hand. When this first broke I thought you've got to be joking, you've all made a tremendous mistake."

His wife also said O'Carrigan:

Former Leighton manager Damian O'Carrigan with former Queensland premier Peter Beattie. Pic SUPPLIED

ADMITTED he had several affairs.

LAVISHED gifts on at least one former lover and friends.

USED a "sugar daddies" dating website to meet young women.

Mrs O'Carrigan said the family was now paying the price after the unravelling of his years of deception.

She said she faced being left penniless after her husband's arrest and will be forced to apply for public housing and a disability pension.

She said the bank had threatened to foreclose on her west Brisbane home and other properties and she had until March 4 to pay.

Auctioneers scoured her home looking for oil paintings and expensive jewellery but found only animal prints and a few gifts to his wife over the years.

She said she was not involved in paying bills and had no knowledge of the number of O'Carrigan's assets.

Barred from her husband's home office before his arrest, Mrs O'Carrigan has since been through his paperwork and found transaction histories that took her breath away.

"I had never seen so many noughts in all my life. Then they would disappear," she said.

Hidden in the study, which includes a pinball machine and jukebox, Mrs O'Carrigan also found receipts for a diamond necklace and silver earrings that were not hers.

Then this week four boxes of O'Carrigan's belongings arrived from his employer Leighton including statements from several linked credit cards she didn't know existed.

In the month before O'Carrigan's arrest, one card was used by a third party to withdraw thousands of dollars and pay for a gym membership, groceries and animal supplies.

On O'Carrigan's iPad, his wife found he was using the website sugardaddies.com which he said was just talk and a bit of fun.

"I said 'who else is there mate'? He said 'there's been a few'."

In a shockingly simple fraud, O'Carrigan apparently created fake invoices for Leighton from entity Acorn Cottage for services that were never provided.

Acorn Cottage was also the name of a Tasmanian farmhouse to which O'Carrigan and his wife planned to retire.

"Damian was going to leave Leighton and he was going to work down there with me," she said.

"We were going to grow herbs and our dogs were going to be raised in cold climates."

The move never happened, with O'Carrigan continuing the fraud despite stealing enough money to live the high life several times over.

O'Carrigan was a finance officer when the fraud started and progressed to finance and administration manager in 2006 with authority to approve payments of up to $5 million, signing off on his own faked invoices. He also used the money to help buy millions of dollars in properties and started breeding and training dozens of racehorses.

One horse has won more than $155,000 in prizemoney and another has won more than $35,000.

O'Carrigan did legal work in NSW before moving to Clermont in central Queensland to work with Leighton as a junior site clerk 30 years ago.

He worked from demountable bush buildings and lived in a caravan park with his wife and young daughter, their only child, before rising in the ranks.

"They used to say he had more orange blood (Leighton's corporate colour) than anyone," his wife said.

A justice of the peace, he rubbed shoulders with business and political chiefs in corporate boxes and at charity events.

He built a Harley Davidson from scratch and would go on charity motorbike runs to raise money for sick children and animals.

At the same time he was involved in relentless theft from his firm, signing off on almost 300 payments between May 2000 and October 2012.

In 2000, about the same time the fraud started, the O'Carrigans bought the acreage at Moggill and began building a new home.

O'Carrigan took his wife to Germany in the same year to buy german shepherds to bring home and breed.

When arrested, O'Carrigan owned in his name units at Auchenflower and Fortitude Valley.

Only O'Carrigan knows why he kept the fraud going for so long when he would likely never have been caught if he quit.

Leighton, which trades on the Australian Stock Exchange and is the world's largest contract miner, belatedly caught up with him when a cost-cutting team noticed unusual transactions last October.

When confronted by Leighton, O'Carrigan admitted to the fraud and was charged. In the quickest major criminal case legal observers can recall, he pleaded guilty in the District Court on November 23.

The fraud had been detected only weeks earlier and everyone, including his wife, was stunned at how swiftly it was all over.

"I had morning tea ready because I thought he was coming home on bail," she said.

"I am embarrassed, I am ashamed and I am disgusted. I am wearing the brunt of this.

"My husband has a roof over his head and he has three meals a day and he's not allowed to be upset by phone calls or harassed.

"Everyone thought because I'm Damian's wife that I was complicit in this and knew everything.

"I had to defend myself first against the general public, against solicitors and then against even my own family and friends.

"Damian is a very likeable man. There are a lot of people who still say it must be a mistake or a set-up. I have since learnt it is not a mistake."

The first she knew of the fraud allegations was when O'Carrigan came home on October 31, Halloween, and said he had been stood down.

He gave little away before seven police officers arrived at their Moggill home and arrested him.

Mrs O'Carrigan says her husband handled the finances and did not like to be questioned over how they were affording their lifestyle.

"I would say 'how are we doing' and he would say 'excellent'. I would always say let me know if there's a problem, if the horses are too much, if the bills are too much. You'd look at them and think that adds up to a bit of money. Then Damian would produce his bonus cheque of $25,000, his tax cheque of $37,000."

About three years ago her husband said he was earning $200,000 a year.

"For the hours, the time, the big company, the recognition, sitting in with board members, taking clients to different corporate boxes . . . no way in the world did it seem to me to be over the top."

david.murray@news.com.au

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Bates facing new pressure over register

EMBATTLED Newman Government Arts and IT Minister Ros Bates is facing fresh calls to quit after a lobbyist lunch was left off her official contact register.

Ms Bates' diary, released under Right to Information laws, has revealed she attended a lunch last year with a major lobbying firm and its clients with interests in the minister's portfolio areas.

However, the lunch was not recorded in Ms Bates' Contact with Lobbyists Register, including the updated version she was forced to release after admitting the initial copy was inadequate.

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The diary details were released to the Opposition on Tuesday last week, which coincides with Ms Bates' decision to sack her chief-of-staff Digby McLeay.

Ms Bates' spokeswoman confirmed the minister attended the lobbyist's lunch but insisted there was no reason to record it in the register.

"There was no lobbying at this event and therefore it wasn't applicable for the lobbyist register," she said.

Opposition arts spokeswoman Jackie Trad rejected the minister's claim and called on her to quit or be sacked.

"It is now up to the Premier to declare if he accepts such sloppy standards and explain why the minister is still in Cabinet with such a string of disasters behind her," she said.

"The Premier's first loyalty should be to Queenslanders and Queenslanders deserve better than Ros Bates."

The diary entry from August 7 shows the lunch at the exclusive Brisbane Club was organised by lobbying firm Barton Deakin with between 15 and 25 of the firm's "clients and friends" attending.

While the firms that attended are not known, the diary entry shows they had "expertise in IT, communications and innovation", all areas related to Ms Bates' responsibilities.

Former Liberal lord mayor of Brisbane Sallyanne Atkinson, a lobbyist with Barton Deakin, co-hosted the event.

While the latest version of Ms Bates' Contact with Lobbyists Register makes no mention of the lunch, contacts between the firm and the minister's office to organise her attendance were recorded, including an email checking on any dietary requirements.

The absence of the lunch from the official record is just the latest in a long line of issues that have beset Ms Bates.

The minister last year blamed an assistant for failing give her the complete contact register after initially tabling in Parliament an inaccurate version.

The meetings missing from the original version included three with with lobbyist and close factional friend, Santo Santoro.

Ms Bates has also been under fire for holidaying in Bali after taking extended sick leave, reading a copy-cat speech in Parliament and opening an elephant statue that she had previously lambasted.

Mr Newman last week defended Ms Bates, insisting the sacking of her chief of staff showed she was cleaning up her act.

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Dying sailor in desperate compo battle

Former sailor Kurt MacKenzie is fighting for compensation after he was accidentally gassed aboard a Navy vessel. Picture: Quinn Stuart Source: The Sunday Telegraph

A 44-YEAR-OLD former senior sailor has accused Defence of delaying his compensation claim as he battles against a slow and painful death.

Kurt MacKenzie was a fit 37-year-old member of the navy's elite "green team" training outfit when he was accidentally gassed with

lethal Hydrogen Sulphide

on board a poorly designed Armidale Class patrol boat off Darwin in August 2006.

After the gassing he was prematurely released from hospital and his treatment was so poor that he now has just 37 per cent lung capacity.

He also suffers from numerous other ailments, including curvature of the spine, narrowing of the oesophagus and post traumatic stress disorder. He is not eligible for a lung transplant.

Mr MacKenzie, who lives in Brisbane, is permanently on oxygen and will never work again.

He was earning $100,000-a-year at the time of his gassing and today is paid a pension of $1900-a-fortnight.

He has waited six-a-half years and doesn't want to finish up like Navy sailors from the HMAS Voyager disaster who had to wait 35 years for justice and compensation.

Mr MacKenzie has a Veterans gold health card so his health care is free, but the Navy and the government have refused to pay him compensation.

"All I want is to be able to pay my mortgage and protect my family," he said.

His wife Sue and his two sons have been provided compensation payments, but Mr MacKenzie has been told for years that his claim was "on the chief of navy's desk" or "on the minister's desk".

News Limited has discovered that it is actually in the hands of lawyers and bureaucrats in the Defence Legal Department.

Senior Navy officers are frustrated by the delay and the minister's office says it has not even seen a claim.

A former navy officer said authorities should make a decision so Mr MacKenzie could move on.

His father John MacKenzie describes his son's treatment as "disgusting". He said Kurt loved the navy and all he ever wanted as a boy was to go to sea with the senior service.

"We gave him to the navy as a healthy, A1 fit 17-year-old and we got him back a total wreck," he said.

"They are waiting for him to die but while ever I've got breath I will fight the bastards."

The MacKenzie family demanded a board of inquiry into the gassing incident, but the navy refused and produced two "secret" internal reports that have not been given to the family. The latest report was handed to Navy chief Vice-Admiral Ray Griggs in December.

In typical bureaucratic fashion Defence refused to say what, if any, recommendations defence legal would make to government on the MacKenzie claim and two other high-profile Navy compensation cases.

"As these applications are currently under consideration, it is not appropriate to disclose what recommendations have been made in respect of the applications," it said.

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Hundreds of Vic firefighters kept busy

VICTORIAN firefighters have been kept busy battling two major fires in the state's east and a number of smaller blazes closer to Melbourne.

A control centre spokesman said 195 firefighters battled the 81,000-hectare Aberfeldy fire in Gippsland in Victoria's east on Saturday.

"It's burning in steep difficult terrain," the spokesman said.

Closer to Melbourne, a watch and act alert was downgraded to an advice warning for communities near an out-of-control fire at Kerrie, northwest of Melbourne.

There are 22 trucks at the scene.

"That's likely to burn into the night and probably won't be brought under control till morning," the spokesman said.

"There's a lot of smoke and activity but it's not threatening houses or property."

A fire at Arthurs Creek, northeast of Melbourne, is under control.

Conditions at a second major fire at Harrietville in alpine country in the northeast had eased, the spokesman said.

A watch and act alert has also been downgraded to an advice warning for the Hotham Heights and Dinner Plain areas, but all residents are believed to have been evacuated.

Wind gusts and spot fires were still a worry in the area as 312 firefighters, 11 aircraft and 60 vehicles worked on the fire on Saturday.

The spokesman said wind gusts were making the fire difficult to predict.

A watch and act warning is in place for Dargo at the southern side of the Harrietville fire that has so far burned around 16,000 hectares.

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Third death linked to Vic cheese company

A THIRD person has died following a listeria outbreak linked to soft cheeses produced in Victoria.

Victoria's acting chief health officer, Dr Michael Ackland, has confirmed the death of a 68-year-old New South Wales man in late January was linked to the listeria contamination of Jindi cheese products, Fairfax reported on Sunday.

An 84-year-old Victorian man and a 44-year-old Tasmanian man have also died of listeria infection. A pregnant NSW woman miscarried. More than 20 other cases have been reported.

Jindi has voluntarily recalled all batches of cheese manufactured up to January 6.

Listeria, a bacterial infection, has a long incubation period and more people could become ill.

The Victoria health department says it acted promptly to contain the outbreak, but has warned there could be more cases.

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Australia and NZ cement ties in Queenstown

THIRTY years of close economic ties between Australia and New Zealand have been cemented with a series of new agreements, but NZ's prime minister is the first to admit they're not on an even footing.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard took part in bilateral discussions with New Zealand Prime Minister John Key in Queenstown on Saturday, ahead of the 30th anniversary of the Closer Economic Relations trade deal, signed in March 1983.

That deal has paved the way for several new announcements, including a crackdown on exorbitant mobile roaming rates in both countries, further streamlining trans-Tasman travel through SmartGate, simplifying investment in each other's country, and recovering student debt.

Ms Gillard and Mr Key also announced greater co-operation on people smuggling, with New Zealand allocating 150 places in its annual refugee quota of 750 to refugees processed in Australian detention centres, from 2014.

While the leaders talked up the mutual benefits of the new arrangements, Mr Key openly admits it's an "asymmetrical" relationship.

"There's an argument that we need them more than they need us, given they're our largest source of tourists, our biggest export market, our largest investor," he said.

"We do have to work hard with that relationship, because there's lots of options for Australia and they could just choose to ignore us if they wanted to."

Ms Gillard was saying nothing of the sort during her time in the picturesque South Island's town, describing the relationship as "one of family" - a point she first made when in 2011 she became the first foreign leader to address New Zealand's parliament.

"There is a bond between Australia and New Zealand that is different to any bond that we share in any other part of the world," she says.

"The very fact that it's fundamental to our soul and how we perceive ourselves - the legend of ANZAC is part of us and it's part of New Zealand forged in history, here in contemporary times, and always here for the future."

It was fitting, then, that Ms Gillard on Saturday announced a new Australian memorial at New Zealand's National War Memorial, currently under construction in Wellington, ahead of the Anzac centenary in 2015.

Ms Gillard flies back to Australia on Sunday morning.

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Assad reshuffles cabinet as jets strike

SYRIAN President Bashar al-Assad has reshuffled his cabinet as his warplanes raided rebel areas.

Syria is in the depths of an unprecedented economic recession because of the violence gripping the country for nearly two years, and the government reshuffle on Saturday focused on finance and social affairs portfolios.

The World Bank says the country's gross domestic product has shrunk by 20 per cent, and the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) puts unemployment at 37 per cent and possibly hitting 50 per cent by the end of 2013.

Assad changed seven ministers, the official SANA news agency reported.

It said he split the ministry of labour and social affairs into two, and brought in a woman, Kinda Shmat, to head the latter. Hassan Hijazi becomes labour minister.

Assad has announced several reshuffles since the uprising against his rule began, the most recent in August 2012.

Efforts towards finding a political solution to the conflict, which the UN says has killed more than 60,000 people, appeared to be deadlocked, hours after Damascus offered talks without preconditions.

The opposition Syrian National Coalition said on February 1, the day after an offer of dialogue by its leader Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, that any talks on the country's political future must be about the departure of the Assad regime.

Meanwhile, in the latest fighting, air raids on Saturday hit northern and eastern areas outside the capital.

Warplanes also hit the town of Sabineh south of Damascus, and fierce clashes broke out between rebels and troops in the embattled town of Daraya, where the army shelled insurgent positions, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The army this week launched a major offensive against rebel zones surrounding the capital, in a drive to break a stalemate.

Pro-regime newspaper Al-Watan said the army was "determined to crush terrorism around the capital and in big cities".

In the north, rebels stormed parts of Menegh airbase less than 25 kilometres from the Turkish border in Aleppo province, the Observatory said.

The Observatory said at least 15 people were killed on Saturday. It reported 136 deaths on Friday.

Lebanon's Maronite patriarch, meanwhile, is to visit Damascus on Sunday for the enthronement of Syria's Greek Orthodox leader, in a show of support for the country's minority Christian community.

Patriarch Beshara Rai will attend the enthronement of Yuhanna X Yazigi, the church said, in the first visit by a Maronite patriarch since Syrian independence in 1943, Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar reported.

It said the trip would "express solidarity between churches while Syria is in crisis, a crisis for Christians in Syria."

Syria's Christian minority makes up about five per cent of the country's population. Many Christians have remained neutral in the conflict while others have taken Assad's side for fear of the rise of Islamism.

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