ICAC CONDEMNS RAILCORP’S CORRUPTION CULTURE

The NSW State owned Rail Corporation was riddled with corruption that should have been prevented by Senior Management, the Board and the State’s Transport Minister.

The Independent Commission against Corruption on Monday, December 15, 2008 released its eighth and final report on fraud and bribery at RailCorp, which found a combination of systemic deficiencies and individual rule breaking had resulted in what it described as “an extra ordinary extent of public sector corruption.”  The report made 40 recommendations addressing the corruption, which in three years saw RailCorp bled of nearly $19 million in improperly awarded contracts and kickbacks to staff and their friends and their families.

Writing in the report ICAC Commissioner Jerrold Cripps QC describes corruption at the organisation as “endemic and enduring,” noting that “the very structure of the organisation and the way it operates allows and encourages corruption.”

“Ultimately, responsibility for preventing corruption in this critical public organisation is shared by RailCorp’s CEO, the RailCorp board and the Minister for Transport,” he says in the report.

“It is clear that the importance of preventing corruption in RailCorp was not a priority for the senior executive team nor part of the standard oversight framework of the organisation.”

He recommends the roles and responsibilities of each be reviewed “to determine whether they need to be restructured to better ensure financially responsible management that would limit the opportunity for corruption.”

NSW Transport Minister David Campbell said he would work with RailCorp chief executive Rob Mason and the NSW Auditor General to implement all 40 of the report’s recommendations.

He would also write to the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions to request criminal charges be laid against anyone ICAC had found to be corrupt, he said.

“This is an opportunity for the Government to say that corruption in the public sector whether in RailCorp or anywhere else, is unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” Mr Campbell said.

But Opposition transport spokeswoman Gladys Berejiklian claimed the Labor Government had failed to act on previous ICAC recommendations.

“Clearly they have the stomach for this type of activity because they’ve swept it under the carpet and they have failed to act and the taxpayers and commuters of NSW are the ones paying for it,” she said.

The ICAC’s two year investigation, which involved nine weeks of hearings, was the largest the Commission had undertaken.