The plot thickens in Jacksonville as the bank trace on the $22,000 meant to have be transferred to Wai Quen Chan in Hong Kong for legal fees comes back — and points to an Australian car dealer’s account. Peter Wicks reports.
TODAY I have a couple of updates on the HSU investigation I have been reporting on.
[Go to the dedicated Jacksonville page, to get up-to-date on this investigation.]
Not long ago, I reported on a payment that was made to Wai Quen Chan by HSU Branch number 3, under the control of Kathy Jackson.
The payment to Wai Quen Chan was for $22,000, which is, I'm sure you will agree, quite a substantial amount of money.
The payment was attributed to legal services by Kathy Jackson's union branch. I have put a link to the documentation below.
See the Wai Quen receipt.
It needs to be remembered that to misrepresent a payment of this type may constitute a fraudulent act — which is a criminal offence.
It is unclear what legal services Jackson thought the union members needed in Hong Kong, where Wai Quen Chan is based. Nevertheless, $22,000 was reported to have been transferred to Wai Quen Chan, despite there being no invoice to back up the payment.
After I published the documents related to this payment, Andrew Landeryou from Vex News contacted Wai Quen Chan about the payment.
Andrew thought he would try to obtain the answer that the Acting General Secretary of HSU East, Peter Mylan, had been unable to obtain, despite his letter to her.
Wai Quen Chan was, to her credit, most helpful indeed. Quen stated that she had not performed any legal services for the HSU since she left the union. She had not performed legal services for the HSU since leaving Australia, and she had never raised an invoice for legal services. She later confirmed these things in writing.
This raises the question of where the money went — since it seems it didn’t go to Wai Quen.
I will get to that...
Some of you may remember there was talk of a car that Kathy Jackson’s ex-husband, Jeff Jackson, was rumoured to have come into possession of, care of the union. That car was a white Mercedes Benz, supposedly imported from Asia at around the same time this payment to Wai Quen was supposed to have been made.
Well, speculation and rumour don't cut it in the real world, so I am pleased to tell you that a bank trace has been performed on the payment to see where the members’ money ended up.
I am now able to report the results of this trace, as the police have been fully briefed and are in possession of all the evidence.
It turns out that the $22,000 never was sent to Wai Quen — she was telling the truth. This is also confirmation that the person who authorised the payment from the union did so fraudulently. Of course, the branch was then under the control of Kathy Jackson.
The money in fact went to an Australian bank account. The owner of this account is a man by the name of Daniel Tsz Leung Chan.
Daniel, it turns out is Wai Quen's brother; that seems an amazing coincidence to me, but it gets better.
Although I have as yet been able to track down Daniel to ask him if he'd ever sold the white Mercedes to Jeff or Kathy, there is something else that grabbed my attention; of course, it may just be a coincidence. There is a company registered to a Daniel Tsz Leung Chan in Australia by the name of First Eastern Pty Ltd. Someone with the exact same name is coincidence enough, but First Eastern's trading name is Hawthorn Motors. More car dealing?
Hmmm.
Unfortunately, it seems Hawthorn Motors has disappeared, and I suspect, like his sister, Daniel may have moved to Hong Kong. I will keep trying to track him down though.
Anyway, the two things we know for certain are, the money didn't go to Wai Quen, and it wasn't for legal services in Hong Kong, as the documentation states.
Another thing that I thought I should mention is that Kathy has explained the $58,000 payment to her ex-husband Jeff from the HSU number 3 cheque account in April 2010. It seems that Jeff was still owed some entitlements from when he worked there.
See the April 2010 Statement.
I guess that is fair enough...
But, hang on a sec… How many months was it since Jeff had worked there? 12 months, actually.
Oh, and wasn't Jeff working at the number 1 branch?
It makes no sense whatsoever to me that Jeff would be paid any entitlements from the number 3 branch. That would be like working for Coles and then getting your entitlements paid to you, a year after you finished, from Target.
Finally, many readers have asked about the Hyundai that showed up on the bank statements. Although Jeff Jackson was driving around in a nice Hyundai SUV care of HSU members money until the administrator was appointed— our investigation is yet to uncover a Hyundai that costs $77,000. Then again, we still haven't found out where the extra approximately $5,000 on the cash cheque for Kathy's Volvo ended up either.
See the Volvo Receipt and EFT Transfer.
See the Volvo Cash Cheque.
Hmmm...
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