September 3, 2010

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/wickenby-prosecutors-drop-moneylaundering-charges-20100903-14rvb.html

PROSECUTORS have dropped the main charge of money laundering against the primary target of the $300 million Operation Wickenby tax investigation on the eve of his arraignment in a Sydney court.

The Australian Federal Police, the Australian Crime Commission and the Tax Office have, since his arrest in Perth in 2008, consistently accused Robert Francis Agius of running the nation's biggest money laundering scheme.

The charge of laundering an amount more than $1 million levelled at Mr Agius at his committal hearing can attract a sentence of up to 25 years.

But the Vanuatu-based accountant and lawyer, who has been stranded in Sydney for two years on $4.4 million bail, will face only two out of three original charges relating to conspiracy to defraud the Commonwealth and attracting a maximum 20 years' jail in total.

The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions decided to discontinue the third charge, but neither his spokeswoman nor the federal police nor Mr Agius's lawyers would comment on the decision last night.

The Agius camp is understood to see the decision as vindication of his statements at a committal hearing two years ago that the charge was ''trumped up'' and ''nebulous''.

The federal police alleged the Ethiopian-born father of three received about $1.4 million in commissions on an estimated $13 million of clients' unpaid tax.

An investigator, Arthur Moerman, alleged in a statement filed earlier in the criminal case that Mr Agius's scheme was a ''straightforward round-robin scheme'' and more than $100million had been moved through foreign company bank accounts operated by Mr Agius on behalf of more than 400 clients since November 2000.

The scheme allegedly involved clients moving funds to overseas companies as consultancy fees, claiming them as a business expense.

The companies - allegedly registered and controlled by Mr Agius - would then loan money back to clients, who registered the repayments as tax deductions.

The withdrawal of the money-laundering charge follows criticism by two of the state's most senior judges of the evidence presented against Mr Agius in a previous civil case against one of the companies.

In the NSW Court of Appeal in 2008, Justices James Allsop and Margaret Beazley said the civil case contained ''no admissible evidence [to] conclude that any of the suspicions held by Mr Moerman were based on reasonable grounds''.

Mr Agius, 60, has consistently declined to comment on the allegations against him, and continued to do so yesterday. He told the court in 2008 that ''the figures and the documentation just aren't correct'' .

Also charged with two counts of defrauding the Commonwealth are Carol Abibadra, Deborah Judith Jandagi and Kevin Zerafa, who are accused of conspiring in tax evasion with their business partner, the late Sydney accountant Owen Trevor Daniel.

They are due to appear in the Supreme Court today.