Queensland’s anti-corruption watchdog has launched a formal investigation into alleged corrupt dealings regarding this year’s Gold Coast city council elections.
The Crime and Corruption Commission announced on Monday its decision to continue its investigation after complaints which include that independent candidates campaigned on donations from the fundraising organisation of the federal Liberal National MP Stuart Robert.
It follows a related investigation by the Electoral Commission of Queensland (ECQ), which oversees laws requiring council candidates to declare themselves as either independents, affiliated with a political party, or a bloc of councillors.
However, the CCC investigation goes beyond questions of party political funding for independents, with the watchdog saying it had examined “numerous complaints on a range of issues linked to the election” in March.
The ECQ returns filed in July by independents Felicity Stevenson and Kristyn Boulton show Robert donated $30,000 to each from his Fadden Forum fundraising body. The donation to Boulton triggered a complaint to the ECQ by former councillor and unsuccessful division four candidate Eddy Saroff.
Disclosures with ECQ for Boulton and Stevenson now confirm each received $30,000.
Stevenson and Boulton were both former employees in Robert’s Fadden electorate office. Robert told the Gold Coast Bulletin in May he gave the women money because he had an interest in “fighting Labor” but there was “no party platform” and both candidates were “fully independent from me and the party”.
Stevenson, who has returned to work in Robert’s office, has said she “should have been clearer in relation to the funding but at the end of the day I was running as an independent and that was the message I was trying to convey”.
“There was no alliance with anyone, it was just me, I was never told the source of the money and my understanding was that it was money that had already been raised,” she told the Gold Coast Bulletin.
Boulton wrote on her Facebook page in February that she was “not a member of any political party [and has] not received funding from any political party”. She told the Gold Coast Bulletin in May: “Stu told me sometime at the end of January or early February that he would provide some funds to help me beat Eddy.”
A month before the Gold Coast elections in March, Robert resigned as the federal minister for veterans affairs and human services after a scandal over a “private” trip to Beijing to oversee a mining deal involving a major Liberal donor.
The CCC said it had determined last Friday to delve further into “allegations of corrupt conduct” after “assessing information from several sources to determine whether an investigation is warranted”.
It called on past and present Gold Coast councillors and members of the public to come forward if they had information, adding the CCC could take information confidentially if required.
The watchdog had received “numerous complaints on a range of issues linked to the election” but was “limited in providing further information whilst the investigation remains ongoing”, it said.
