A former transport bureaucrat has admitted to being paid with envelopes of cash at an Oporto fast-food restaurant after allegedly asking a contractor to artificially inflate invoices so they could share the difference.
Ibrahim Helmy, 38, appeared before the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac) on Thursday for a second day of evidence on his alleged involvement at the centre of a multimillion-dollar kickback scheme.
On Tuesday, he told a hearing he had been hiding in a cupboard when police arrived to arrest him last month, after he failed to appear for an examination as part of the investigation in May.
Under questioning from counsel assisting Rob Ranken SC on Thursday, Helmy admitted to elements of an alleged scheme laid out at earlier hearings.
The commission was shown correspondence from 2012 between Helmy and a contractor, Complete Linemarking, in relation to work on several Sydney roads, including the M4 motorway.
Helmy admitted to asking the company to send invoices to his private email account so he could amend them with inflated figures. They were then allegedly submitted to the former Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) agency, where he worked at the time as a project engineer.
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The hearing saw a spreadsheet which Helmy admitted creating, with columns indicating the rough amounts of the original invoices and the inflated invoices.
Other columns showed the difference between them, and the proposed split of the difference between the two parties.
Helmy said he received cash amounts in envelopes from Complete Linemarking, although he said there were initially “issues with getting cash out”.
He admitted to later scanning invoices at his RMS office and altering them to create fake invoices to the contractor for traffic control services, creating a paper record allowing them to withdraw money to pay him under the alleged scheme.
The commission heard the relationship continued in subsequent years, with Helmy often receiving cash at the Oporto restaurant in Wetherill Park in western Sydney, including from Complete Linemarking part-owner Peter Jankulovski.
Jankulovski told the inquiry in July that the men had often arranged to meet at the back of the restaurant or at the company’s premises, where cash would allegedly be handed over.
After an agreement to meet in February 2015, Helmy wrote in one message to Jankulovski: “Ok cool, at the back of Oportos.”
“I’m here now,” Helmy later wrote.
The hearing was shown an image texted in July 2015 by Helmy to an alleged associate of several envelopes of cash laid out on a tiger-print bedspread, which Helmy recognised as one from his then home.
“Got about 84k with me now haha,” Helmy wrote.
Asked if numbers written on the envelopes match amounts allegedly paid between December 2014 and July 2015, shared in a spreadsheet by Jankulovski with him, Helmy said: “Yeah possibly.”
But the commission heard that the relationship with Complete Linemarking had deteriorated by June 2020, and Helmy told another alleged co-conspirator, Peter Le, about his desire to end the arrangement.
“I want to fuck off complete linemarking [sic],” Helmy wrote to Le.
Helmy also answered questions about the frequent use of the word “penis” in text exchanges with Le, with the two often using the word to refer to each other. Helmy claimed it had started as an autocorrect of Le’s first name, but he later admitted had been “just some joke”.
Helmy also allegedly wrote emails from Le’s account to give the appearance the pair were corresponding in relation to contract tenders, when in fact he was writing to himself.
“I shouldn’t have been doing that,” he told Ranken.
What Ranken described as the pair’s “puerile” language came up again in relation to a meeting between Helmy in September 2018 and Adam Spilsted, the operations manager for contractor Direct Traffic, and his wife, Mechelina Van Der Ende-Plakke, a director of the company.
On the day after the meeting, Helmy texted Le to say he had “tried to do a deal” with the couple and had told them that if he was able to get them on to a panel of confirmed suppliers, things would “get juicy and more detailed”.
Spilsted told the inquiry in July that he went behind his “wife’s back” to pay alleged kickbacks to Helmy to secure roadwork contracts.
Helmy, who said his message to Le did “not necessarily” show he sought to enter into an improper arrangement with the couple, said: “The way we talk is not necessarily … speaking of any value. We’re just saying random words, because look at his next reply.”
Ranken said: “These aren’t random words, and nor in fact is Mr Le’s next response: ‘I like this a lot in the butt.’ … It might have vulgarity to it, it might have a puerile sense of humour to it, but the two of you frequently used sexual terms or sexualised language to express your appreciation for things.
“It’s very titillating, somewhat homophobic language, possibly.”
Helmy, who joined the transport department in 2010, had his employment terminated in December over inappropriate use of the department’s messaging platform.
That month, he was picked up at Sydney airport with a US passport while he was waiting for a flight to China, as he was partway through a compulsory examination at the time.
He was brought before Icac the next day but released on the condition he appear again in May, when he failed to show up.
He was arrested on 26 September and has been in custody since, although he has not been criminally charged.
The inquiry, which is looking into alleged kickbacks for contracts worth more than $343m, has heard allegations he personally received more than $11.5m.
Helmy is expected to give evidence again on Friday.
– with Australian Associated Press
