It was a crisp autumn morning and classical music was floating through solicitor John Gerathy’s multimillion-dollar waterfront apartment in Woolloomooloo.Mr Gerathy was a friend and business partner of the now-disgraced mining minister Ian Macdonald.
He had been asked to identify his handwriting on certain documents that had been discovered during a raid on his premises. Counsel assisting Geoffrey Watson, SC, said he was finished with him for the moment before adding ominously, “I’m afraid Mr Gerathy cannot be excused, he’ll be required later in the inquiry.
When Mr Shaw checked his firm’s archives, he was even more surprised to find that someone had already beaten him to the file. That someone was his former legal partner, John Gerathy. When Mr Shaw retrieved the file, crucial documents were missing.Days before ICAC’s file request, Macdonald had been called to a secret ICAC hearing. It is a criminal offence to breach the commission’s confidentiality requirements, but Macdonald had more pressing concerns.
Although Obeid denied the meeting took place, at the end of June, Obeid’s son Moses took Mr Fang on a tour of the family’s property. But then disaster struck in the form of a pesky journalist. On July 3, 2008, only five days after Mr Fang’s trip to Cherrydale Park, veteran political reporter Alex Mitchell wrote a story for Crikey, the headline of which was “NSW mining minister and the mysterious Mr Fang”. The story detailed how friendly Macdonald was with the Rolls-Royce driving Mr Fang, who had just chartered a jet to fly Macdonald and other government officials to various meetings during their visit to China.
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